


nevermind I'll find someone like you

by strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Romance, Based on an Adele Song, Best Friends, Boy Scout with a filthy mouth kink, Boyfriends, Campfires, Camping, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Friendships, Devoted Reylo, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Everything Hurts, F/M, Falling In Love, First Love, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Friendship, Hand Jobs, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Loss of Virginity, Love, Making Love, Making Out, Making Up, Masturbation in Bathroom, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, OTP Feels, One True Pairing, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, POV Ben Solo, POV Rey, Pain, Reylo - Freeform, Sleepovers, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Summer, Summer Camp, Summer Love, Summer Romance, Sweet, Swimming Pools, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Teenage Drama, True Love, Underage Kissing, Vaginal Sex, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Rey, sweet badass girl kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:27:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 44,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie/pseuds/strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie
Summary: “No one could forget you,” Ben piped up across the table from Hux where he sat watching the exchange.Ben's stare at her was heated, his voice deep where it had still been broken and nasally last summer, his shoulders broader and chest fuller. He didn't look like he was asking permission for anything and suddenly, Rey wanted to give it anyhow.Oh God.*****Some years they are adversaries, some years they are allies.All years they are connected more powerfully than they can understand.





	1. June 2010 Rey

**Author's Note:**

> art by @rileybabe

 

 

June 2010

 

 

_Rey_

 

 

Before she even sees him, she knows he’s walked through the door.

 

He’s here.

 

From where she’s chatting exuberantly with Jyn and Paige on a bench at a long wooden table in the mess hall, Rey feels her heart constrict hard when Poe and Hux holler loudly from their neighboring table. Her hands still, her throat swallows forcibly, her eyes burn a hole into Jyn as she watches the girl’s mouth move, her hearing tuned only to the guys as they greet him behind her.

 

“Solo!”

 

Up they both jump, Poe across the table top, both attacking their target noisily while Rey comes to, realizing she’s frozen solid and she jerks her leg into movement abruptly, swinging it where it's crossed over her other leg under the table. Even if the boys hadn’t been so noisy about it, she’s pretty sure she would somehow still have felt him enter the room.

 

Someone has muted all the noise in the cavernous mess hall around her and Rey knows he’s nearby without even turning to see him standing in front of the double doors, keeping her back straight and her neck tall.

 

_Breathe._

 

She coaches her face into an unassuming grin, feigning interest in Jyn’s story, tucking into her turkey and lettuce on white with renewed vigor, all the while aware of little else besides the magnetic pull she feels to the person who she knows just entered the hall.

 

Without even looking, she feels him move towards the buffet line, something reaching towards his direction from inside her chest wall, against her will.

 

Last time she saw him, he’d tucked her hair behind her ear. His eyes had been lit up in the noon sunshine, and Rey held her breath then, too, wondering. It lasted only seconds before he turned to punch knuckles with a buddy and hug someone else goodbye and she did, too.

 

10 months later and it’s as if that was yesterday, or even earlier today. A set of gears has woken from hibernation. Somewhere in this room he’s tall and smirking, probably listening to Poe and Hux talk too much, probably piling food on his plate in line. If she moved her head a little, she could even see him from here, see whether he’s changed, whether he’s the same.

 

_Breathe._

 

“So, do you want to?” Paige asks.

 

_Shit._

 

“Um…” Rey’s thoughts remain scattered. She can’t catch the thread as it floats by to catch it and remember what they’d been talking about, she’s too busy feeling flustered and trying to seem unaffected. It’s taking all her brain power to concoct a way to look nonchalant. “Do - do _you_ want to?” That’s probably a safe response, right?

 

“Yeah, I mean, _I’m_ down but, then again, I _like_ sneaking out. I wasn’t sure if you’re still adamantly opposed,” Paige said.

 

Sneaking out, that’s right.

They’d been talking about meeting up with some of the guys after Lights Out tonight and heading for the docks.

 

Last year, and every year before Rey had still been adamantly opposed to breaking rules, earning the nickname “Mary Sue,” for several years until she led her fellow Hummingbird cabin mates to the huge pool after Lights Out last summer and dared them all to skinny dip with her.

The girls had each squealed and squeaked as they took a lap around the pool perimeter, stifling their laughter and splashing and then hurried back into shorts and tank tops and giggled all the way back to the Hummingbird cabin. They never did get found out.

Finally, she’d lost the annoying nickname among the girls even if a few of the boy campers still called her that, Rey too embarassed and reluctant to confirm the skinny dipping rumors to their faces.

 

Hopefully, no one would start it back up this year.

 

“I’m in,” Rey said, giving a shrug and taking a bite out of her sandwich.

Last year she might have wondered whether her agreement was influenced by Ben Solo’s recent appearance in the mess hall and the year before that she would have denied it outright. Every year since she was 11, in fact, there would have been anything from a dramatic annoyance at the mention of his name to a stark insistence her participation had nothing to do with him or at the very least a vague dismissal of the notion but, at 16 Rey quits lying to herself.

 

She wants to go to the docks tonight and she wants Ben there, too.

 

Not that anyone else needs to know that, yet.

 

“Sweet,” Paige says and wrinkles her nose in cheer, taking a bite of her ham sandwich, tossing the useless iceberg lettuce on the plate where it’s slipped from between the bread. “I’ll tell Poe.”

 

“I have dibs on Hux,” Jyn said, sucking her teeth and leaning back to stretch. Her hoop nose ring gleamed in the lights and Rey was fascinated to see her belly button was pierced as well when she raised her arms over her head. Jyn had worked through a crush on every boy at camp, sometimes trading her affection for someone different halfway through the summer over the years they’d been coming to Camp Sweetwood together but this was news to Rey.

 

“Oh yeah?” Rey asked, grinning. “You have a thing for gingers now?” Rey smiled brightly at her friend while she felt her antenna track the huddle of boys making their way through the buffet line. They were making drinks now, just at the far left periphery of Rey’s field of vision and she teased herself just another moment, not allowing herself to turn her head and glimpse him yet.

 

“I have a thing for Hux,” Jyn corrected. “Or at least, I’m about to. Look at him. He’s filled out this year.”

 

Jyn craned her neck to look at the group of guys walking lunch trays to a nearby table and Rey and Paige followed her line of sight, her invitation to survey Hux giving Rey an opportunity for her own eyes to locate what some part of her already had the moment he entered the mess hall.

 

_Ben._

 

Rey gave her eyes a minute to roam him freely while he hadn’t seen her yet before raising her chin slightly and licking her lips to startle herself from her staring but, not before catching his eye. That’s just how she remembered them too, his eyes - a pair of eyes so dangerous they made you hope he would kiss you goodbye before you went home for the school year, even if he didn’t.

Those eyes were still right there on his cute fucking face.

 

_Not cute anymore though,_ Rey realized, watching his bold gaze at her while he sat down. _Handsome. Straight up, deadass handsome._  

 

She watched one more moment as he chuckled at something Poe said and looked up at his friends, giving Rey a moment of grace to tear her eyes away from him and she realized in that moment she understood the difference between cute and handsome.

 

“Yeah,” Paige said. “Cute now but, I’ll bet he’s still got a royal stick up his ass.”

 

“Meh, doesn’t matter when you’re making out,” Jyn pointed out.

 

Paige and Rey giggled and shook their heads at her brazen retort, knowing Jyn to always be the ringleader of their sisterhood, the troublemaker who led the way, created the fun and took the risks. If she was hoping to have a romantic connection with Hux, maybe that would pave the way for Rey to have courage to seek Ben out for…something.

 

“You guys ready?” Rose asked, approaching the table. “We’ve got room assignments ready!” She held up yellow lanyards with each of their names attached, Hummingbirds denoted by the bright shade and all three eagerly crawled backward off the table bench, taking a lanyard and heading for the trash cans to deposit the trash from lunch.  

 

“We’re in,” Paige announced to Poe with a high five as she passed the boys at their own table, their conversation quieting as the girls approached.

 

Rey’s heart fluttered like set of nervous bird wings while she watched Poe’s face studiously, acting extremely interested in his passing interaction with Paige discussing the finer points of meeting up after hours tonight. She trained her eyes on Poe even as she felt herself being watched, aware all the guys at the table they’d paused at were watching them intently.

 

“Are all of you coming?” Hux asked lazily, somehow managing to sound annoyed in six syllables.

 

Rey turned slowly to glare at him. “Is there a _problem_ with that, Armitage?” she stressed deliberately.

 

“Not as long as you girls keep it down, _Mary Sue_ ,” he said, pointedly, “We don’t want to alert Holdo and Ackbar.”

 

“It’s **_Rey_** ,” she narrowed her eyes and smiled at him tightly, cocking her head to the side, knowing full well Hux was baiting her. “In case you forgot.”

 

“No one could forget you,” Ben piped up, across the table from Hux where he sat watching the exchange.

 

Rey blushed immediately and intensely, her eyes flying to meet his as he looked up at her unabashedly in front of their friends. _  
_

Ben's stare at her was pointed and heated, his voice deep where it had still been broken and nasally last summer, his shoulders broader and chest fuller than it was last year. He didn't look like he was asking permission for anything and suddenly, Rey wanted to give it anyhow. _  
_

_  
Oh God._

 

“So, 10:45,” Jyn said after a beat, giving her hair a flip over her shoulder, pulling Rey’s hand as she led the group of girls away, Paige and Rose one step behind.

 

It felt like Rey’s heart was outside her chest and she struggled to pull it back inside her ribs as she allowed herself to be tugged outside, grabbing her two duffle bags from the benches and following her cabin mates to their familiar summer home in the woods where she knew Leia already awaited all female campers.

 

“What the hell was that?” Jyn asked Rey as they walked.

 

“I have no idea.” Rey answered honestly as she thought through the last half hour, her acute awareness of Ben’s presence, her inherent tracking of his movements, his comment, her instant reaction…she’d always had a connection with him unlike anyone else but, most of the last 6 years it had been competitive or adversarial.

She'd almost thought last year, just as they were ending camp, just before they left but then...no. Nothing.   
  
All the way home to southern Indiana she'd replayed their interactions, trying to make sense of her own feelings and thoughts, dreamily pushing her hair behind her ear the way he had, her fingers trailing the shell of her ear, unable to capture a simlar effect.   
She'd spent an entire week talking herself out of there having been anything between them and another week feeling stupid for having imagined it all.

 

Today though, there was no denying the charge she felt when he showed up at camp, something staking itself down deeply into her heart when he looked at her across the room, dragging her to himself like a kite string held in his hand through the wind. 

 

“Well, whatever it was, it was powerful. I think I felt the earth move,” Jyn teased, pinching Rey’s arm lightly and hip checking her.

 

Rey smiled as she focused on climbing the hill to the cabin carefully.

“I think I did, too.”

 

 


	2. June 2010 Ben

 

 

June 2010

 

 

  
  
_Ben_

 

“That’s fuckin nasty, dude,” Ben snorted as he walked into the cabin, letting the screen door slam behind him.

 

Finn laughed heartily as he made his way inside behind him and shoved him good-naturedly as they walked across the creaking floorboards, toweling themselves off as they walked towards their bunks.

 

“Hey Freeman, do me a favor,” Hux shouted as Finn moved towards the bathroom, “try not to shake the bed so hard when you’re up there jerking it tonight, would you, please?”

 

Ben snorted and pulled a thin t-shirt over his head and pulled up a pair of boxers and shorts under the beach towel wrapped around his waist as Finn exploded in hearty denials.

 

“Whatever, _Hugs_ ,” he emphasized incorrectly with an eyeroll. “I’m not spanking it right there in the bunk bed, man, shut the fuck up.”

 

Hux gave an exaggerated eye roll as Finn threw his towel at the redhead, moving to find clothes and dropping his wet trunks where they fell. “Right, right. It’s probably mild tornadic activity moving the bed while I’m trying to fall asleep.”

 

Ben scrubbed at his hair with the towel as he shook his head at the two guys arguing and moved towards a mirror. He shook his long hair out of his face and stared at himself for a minute, slightly angling his face one way and then another. He sniffed hard through the nostrils and raised his chin, inspecting the faint line of stubble along his jawline and moved away before anyone caught him inspecting his face, avoiding any taunts about being a dick and ran a slick of mousse through his hair before moving to the toilet closet at the far end of the cabin.

 

If he was going to jerk off, he’d do it in the bathroom where there was some fucking privacy for God’s sake, somewhere he could be alone with his torment and free his hard-on completely before getting off. No way did he want to waste this being gentle and secretive.

 

That had been a bikini under that oversized t-shirt, it was clear as Ben approached the pool and saw the cluster of girls already tossing a striped beach ball around, their voices calling like a siren song across the campgrounds as the guys walked up from the cabins.

She was soaking wet, jumping around in waist-deep water, the white shirt doing nothing but helpfully clinging to every curve concealed beneath, the bikini underneath clearly neon green, a big fucking green traffic light telling Ben _“go, go, go.”_

 

If camp leadership was smart, they’d outlaw oversized white t-shirts in the pool, that sight doing damn near as much as naked skin to mess with his mind but, then again, if guidelines were designed to support efforts to make Ben keep his eyes and hands to himself, they’d outlaw Rey Jackson from showing up at Sweetwood all together.

 

He and his Eagle cabin mates jumped into the pool irreverently, crashing the party in the shallow end, handily making off with the beach ball and immediately moving as a team to irk the girls already there. They hadn’t strategized that ahead of time with a game plan, there was no need. Hux was clearly going to go straight for Jyn, Poe would be sidling up to Paige and Finn would head for Rose.

 

Leaving Rey all for him.

 

If he’d planned a diagram for attack himself, it couldn’t have been anymore ideal.

 

“Give it back, Solo,” she demanded as she dog paddled into the deep end, chasing the beach ball in his palm where he held it aloft as he sped into deeper water. Her tone was biting but, Ben stole a glance over his shoulder as he swam away from her and there it was, there was that little fucking smile, the one he earned last summer, the one he fantasized about when he jerked off, the one he was always working to get.

 

“Make me, Jackson,” he taunted, holding the ball over his head easily.

 

She was Poe’s height but, Ben had gained 3 inches this last year and he was a good head taller than her now and it was effortless to play a game of keep-away with her. He dodged her in the water while holding the ball overhead as she kicked to reach him, swerving away from her touch at the last minute each time until his consciousness knocked on the door of his brain.

 

_Why are you trying to keep away from her, moron? See if she’ll touch you. See if she’ll let you touch her._

 

Ben switched strategies immediately.

 

He tossed the beach ball to the shallow end to Poe and took a breath, diving underneath Rey’s slim, smooth legs before she could protest. He swam between them, nudging them wider with his shoulders and turned around when he was beneath her, repositioning himself under her crotch. _Fuck._ He’d never been this close to her pussy before. _It was_ **_right_ ** _there._ He ducked back under and tucked her legs around himself before standing and raising her seated bottom onto his shoulders, anchoring his hands around her thighs against his pecs, lifting her out of the water.

 

She felt like a perfect weighted blanket.

Like she was holding his feet to the pool floor and rooting him to the earth where she was sitting on his shoulders. Her feet tucked behind his back and her hands rested on his head and all the while her pussy was at the back of his head.

 

_Was that perverted, his memories of her bikini bottom-clad pussy on the back of his head getting him off in the cabin bathroom right now?_

 

Too fucking bad, it was sweet and wet and almost touching him, open and spread and he didn’t give a fuck if it was weird, he thought it was hot and it got him fucking hard as rock even in the cool water.

 

“Chicken fight!” he heard her call to the others in the shallow end. Rey leaned down and curled around his head from her perch on his shoulders and looked at him upside down as he walked to the shallow end of the pool.

 

“Can you see down there?” she asked, scooping hair from his forehead, her hazel eyes glittering like jewels in the bright summer sunlight behind her, her head blocking direct light until she looked like an angelic being backlit with the heavens.

 

“I’m good,” he said after he swallowed, all his efforts being used to keep his voice from cracking.

 

“Don’t let go, whatever you do. No matter what. Hang onto me,” she instructed.

 

“I got you,” he assured her, digging fingertips into her thighs around his neck as she gripped him with her muscles.

 

He was so close, beating off remembering this.

All he would have had to do was walk all the way out of the water, up the steps, around a corner and he could have just twisted her hips until she was seated against his face instead of against his neck. He could push the t-shirt up a couple inches further, pull her neon green bikini bottoms to the side and lick right into whatever fucking sweet goodness was in that little pussy of hers, SweeTarts and cherry limeade and FunDip. She wouldn’t even protest, she’d just lean her head back against the brick wall of the pool building he leaned her up against and moan and run her hands through his hair and he’d jerk off against the red brick underneath her tight, little body, paint it white with his cum while he sucked her little clit and licked his tongue into her tight hole.

 

Ben had a fleeting moment of concern, vaguely aware the physics may not exactly have held up but, whatever. _This is a fantasy. Stop it, Solo._

 

They’d only been knocked down three times in the pool, way less than the other stacked couples they’d gone up against, Ben’s height and Rey’s fighting style, not to mention his complete refusal to unhand the girl on his shoulders giving them the advantage.

Each time they’d been toppled, he’d been almost glad for the way Rey made her way back to his side and clambered up his frame, assuming her seat atop his shoulders like she was queen on a throne, like she belonged with him, seated on him, like her thighs belonged around his ears, like her hands coming to rest on his hair between rounds, raking through his wet hair just as she would be doing if he had her naked, on her back, moaning, arching her back so she met his mouth, eating her out.

 

_That did it._

 

Fuck, that was messy but it was worth it. This girl had him coiled like a spring all day, every day and he was using more toilet paper to clean up jizz than to wipe his ass this summer. She marched around camp with tanned, toned legs in denim shorts and mousy brown hair falling over her freckled shoulders and that little pink smile shining up shyly at him and Ben knew he was going to have to figure out a way to kiss her soon or he was going to visit the clinic with a heart attack.

 

“Solo, you gonna be done in there anytime soon?” Finn pounded on the door.

 

“Hold your horses, I’m coming,” Ben shouted as he zipped up his pants, smirking as he heard Poe tease from he other side of the door, “I’ll bet you are.”

 

“Need a little alone time, hmm?” Finn shoved him with a shoulder as he exited and walked past, keeping his face impassive even if his ears burned with the embarrassment of being found out.

 

Ben smirked and shoved him back. “Least I use a bathroom and not a bunk bed, Freeman.”

He swiped a pass of deodorant on before capping the stick and tossing it onto his bed, throwing his wet towel on the pile beside his bunk and headed for the screen door again, ready to make his way to dinner. He could wait on the guys out here. The mosquitoes weren’t that bad yet, it was still hours till dark.

Ben stepped through the Eagle cabin screen door, the familiar creaking and telltale slam echoed from the girls’ cabin across the gravel mirroring his own as he walked slowly towards the trail leading to the mess hall.

 

They hadn’t timed it, they hadn’t planned it, there wasn’t a strategic meeting of the minds or a plan they were following, it was just how it was between them. They were a match set, he’d realized it middle of the summer last year and had counted the months till he came back to Sweetwood this year hoping she’d be here like she always was, hoping they could pick up where they left off when he’d chickened out last August.

 

He wasn’t surprised when she fell into step beside him and crunched the gravel under her sandals with him. He smiled down at her beside him and felt his insides bubble up like he’d blown through a straw into chocolate milk when she smiled back up at him and he shoved his hands down into his pockets.

 

He wasn’t surprised but, _fuck_ if he wasn’t pleased.


	3. June 2010 Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter at age 16 from Ben's POV after this, before we spin this thing sideways.

 

 

June 2010

  
  
  
  
  
_Rey_

  
  


“Oh my God, Jyn, that looks _amazing_ on you.”

 

“Paige, where did you _find_ that?”

 

“Rose, that color looks _so_ good with your dress.”

 

“Rey, that is genius, I _love_ it!”

 

The ladies of the Hummingbird cabin had been gushing over one another since 4 as they dressed for dinner, preparing for Theme Night with gusto.

 

Years past had taught them to take the theme seriously, having learned by age 13 it wasn’t as cool to be aloof as they’d assumed when they’d each declined to bring costume materials with them from home in their luggage.

Actually, bored disinterest only made things dull.

 

The last two years, there had been little chance to look cute in what they’d brought from home though, the themes having been Christmas and Harry Potter, respectively.

 

The Christmas theme had been festive enough two years ago, even with the plastic decorations, everyone sweating beneath tacky sweatshirts appliquéd with sequined reindeer and Santa faces. The Harry Potter theme last year had been even better, everyone finding themselves heavily invested in supporting the house they were sorted into. A few kids had even sweltered beneath long, black Hogwarts robes, unwilling to compromise authenticity.

 

Rey had sported her Gryffindor colors beside Poe and Paige proudly, her red and gold clothing, colored hairspray and nail polish proclaiming her loyalty to her house. Ben and Jyn represented Slytherin with smug smirks and clothes in shades of camouflaged black and green, and Finn and and Rose dressed in Hufflepuff yellow and smiled brightly all night long. Even Hux arrived in a blue t-shirt and jeans, satisfied to solely represent Ravenclaw among their friend group, his arrogance in his own intelligence only amplified by his house sorting.

  


As fun as that had been, slurping butterbeer from red Solo cups and casting spells with tree twigs, this year’s theme was decidedly more conducive to dressing age-appropriate and the Hummingbirds had come prepared.

 

80’s night found the cabin abuzz with activity as everyone pulled out their procured, treasured gear.

 

Side ponytails, leg warmers, frosted eyeshadow and tight miniskirts transformed Rey and her best friends from scrubby, suntanned teen campers to music video backup dancers, their crimped hair and baby pink lips a perfect antitheses to the daytime grubbiness of veteran campers.

 

For all the fun cabin life was, sulfuric shower and pool water, combined with being caught in the rain routinely left Rey’s hair sagging and tinted nearly green.

 

Her eyebrows hadn’t been plucked in at least a week and she’d skipped shaving anything but her pits and legs since she got to camp.

 

Tonight, all the girls took their time getting glamorous, trading makeup in front of the small mirrors in their cabin sink area as they pumped Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and Debbie Gibson on Jyn’s iPod balanced on a sink ledge beside themselves to get into the mood.

 

Rey slinked into skintight silver leggings, pulled an open-necked Madonna t-shirt over a hot pink tank top strap, yanked one shoulder out and belted the whole thing with a wide electric blue belt, piling her hair high into a scrunchie on the side of her head. She lined her eyes with teal eyeliner and added geometric purple earrings that scraped her collarbone when she shook her head and stepped into a pair of glitter Jelly shoes before heading for the mess hall with her friends.

  


The mess hall wasn’t so much transformed as it was optimistic on a Theme Night.

 

Jyn tugged her aqua miniskirt a touch higher and linked her arm through Rey’s as they marched through the double swinging doors into the mess hall. The lone, faithful disco ball hung from the center rafter as always, the single decoration intended to lend decor to any party at camp and The Cure was playing over the ancient PA system.

 

Rey let her eyes adjust as she surveyed the hall before taking a step inside, the hall darker than normal as dinner was later tonight. At some point there would be dancing and potentially some theme games which Rey and her friends would play overly-enthusiastically, laughing themselves into a stupor before being ejected for outrageously disorderly behavior but first, everyone still had to eat dinner.

 

Things in the mess hall still looked pretty sedate, people seated at the long, unadorned tables and benches they used for every meal, campers still going through the motions of eating before moving on to more exciting festivities.

 

“C’mon,” Paige said and moved towards the buffet line. “Let’s get the eating part done first.”

 

Wedged between Paige and Jyn in line, Rey scooped a messy slice of salisbury steak swimming in gravy beside a crusty clover roll before moving towards the green beans and iced tea. She didn’t even hear him when he walked up behind her.

 

“Hey sweetheart,” Ben murmured right beside her ear, leaning in closely and making Rey jump while she reached for the handle of the green bean tub slotted spoon.

 

Ben leaned between her body and Paige’s and grabbed her roll off her plate, tearing a bite from the bread with a fierce tearing between his canines while he smirked down at her where she was still recovering from being spooked as she looked up at him.

 

“Hey!” Rey protested half-heartedly.

Truthfully, it was an overpowering and intoxicatingly good sensation to be the girl Ben zeroed in on, even if it was to lift her food.

 

 _Worth it,_ she thought.

 

“Save me a seat,” he said around a mouthful of bread before he moved on to make himself a plate.

 

Rey rolled her eyes dramatically and leaned around Jyn. “Rose, hand me another roll will you, please?”

 

She tossed it with a slight huff onto her plate as if she was put out instead of turned on and proceeded through the line towards the drinks, finally moving with her girlfriends towards their table.

 

_Did he mean it?_

_Was he going to sit with her? Really?_

 

Rey lagged behind as her friends took seats, her feet sticky inside her Jellys as she followed Paige to the table, trying to devise a means of casually being seated while also leaving space just in case Ben meant it and was planning to sit beside her.

 

He’d never done that before but, she was down if he was.

Nothing had happened between them since Monday night when they were all watching _The Little Mermaid_ on the overhead projector screen against the pool house wall while lying on blankets but that night, Ben had linked his pinky finger around hers when they found themselves on seperate blankets laying side-by-side.

 

Rey had barely breathed the entire movie.

 

She couldn’t work up the audacity to slip anymore of her fingers through his, just lace together them even though every cell in her body was urging her to do so. She just laid there barely listening, enjoyed his one smallest finger, twice as big as her own, wrapped around hers between their blankets where no one could see.

 

She’d kept her eyes trained on the screen dutifully for an hour at least, almost completely immobile before courageously turning to see their fingers linked, just to be sure she had a visual to pack away for future reference and when she turned back, she caught Ben’s eye watching her.

 

It was so dark that night, the screen flickering against his skin the only light but, Rey stared back into his eyes as long as she dared. Neither of them smiled, they just looked at one another, flat not their backs, side-by-side, only one finger each curled around one another.

 

 _So_ hot, Paige had said.

He is _so_ into you, Jyn told her later.

Oh my _God_ , Rose said.

 

Since Monday night, though - nothing.

  


Rey took a seat at the far end of the table, leaving just enough space for one person to sneak a seat beside her but, not enough that it would look conspicuous if he hadn’t been serious. Not enough to embarrass herself if it remained empty.

She half-listened to Jyn talk about _Pretty Little Liars_ with Paige and she poked at her salisbury steak.

 

They had half an hour till Theme Night officially began and she’d stuffed a tube of gloss inside Jyn’s chain strap purse in case she ate all hers off at dinner but, she couldn’t work up any appetite while she sat nervously waiting to see if Ben would approach.

 

Rey’s breath caught on a lump of mashed potatoes she was swallowing when Poe sat down right across from her, beside Jyn, his hunched shoulder nearly bumping hers as he clasped his hands together and leaned in conspiratorially to start a conversation with the table.

Ben sat down beside Rey before she had a chance to take a drink and clear her airway and she was thankful she was too distracted trying to swallow to greet him over-enthusiastically.

 

“Meet us at the docks tonight at 11:30,” Poe offered with a gleam in his eye.

 

Rey stiffened slightly as she felt Ben’s hand slide over her leg, his hand landing so it cupped semi-firmly around her kneecap under the table where no one could see.

 

Rey glanced around stealthily to be sure no one noticed but, everyone seemed caught up in Poe’s idea.

She looked at Jyn across from her who was too busy staring at Poe and chatting about details for a late night group rendezvous to catch her eye.

 

Rey kept her face pointed at her food and deliberately spread her knees ever so slightly, edging her leg closer to Ben in response to his hand on her.

 

Neither of them looked directly at one another but, stayed tuned in, at least on the surface to what was going on around them at the table.

 

“Think anyone will be out on watch that late?” Ben asked, his unaffected tone giving no clue what his hand was busy doing underneath the table as his fingers lazily traced circles around Rey’s knee cap through her silver nylon leggings. “Since it’s a Theme Night? Think Holdo and Ackbar will still out be cruising?”

 

Rey took a sip of water and pushed her knee towards Ben’s the slightest bit further, her heart fluttering faster than a butterfly’s wings when she felt his hand squeeze her knee before continuing to drag his fingers across it.

 

“Who cares? We’ll be there,” Jyn said, leaning back to look at Hux who was striding towards them, arms swinging proudly as he tossed his long red hair out of his face. “Oi, Huxy,” she called, “you be at the thing tonight?”

 

Rey felt Ben’s fingers trail towards her torso slightly, migrating from her knee and her heart twisted hard as she inhaled sharply, her quaking belly sending minor tremors to her panties instantly.  She wasn’t sure if it was nerves or courage that made her do it but, she found her own hand slipping under the table as inconspicuously as possible, her fingers finding Ben’s where they traced slow patterns into her mid-thigh and she laced her fingers between his for the first time, their palms meeting as his thick fingers curved around her smaller, slim own and her heart squeezing in a thrill at the same moment he squeezed her hand.

 

“Alright,” Paige was saying to everyone, “that works. Let’s do the Theme thing and then meet at 11:25 between the cabins to head down there together.”

 

“ _Quietly,_ ” Hux emphasized, always correcting everyone as if it was his assigned responsibility.

 

Finn threw a napkin at him while Rose intoned a bored, “yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,” with an eye roll.

 

“You gonna dance with me tonight?” Ben asked quietly, finally turning to Rey to speak with her directly, even though his hands had been on her for nearly 10 minutes.

 

Their hands remained laced and Rey looked from his left eye to his right, her head tilted to look up at him. She couldn’t think of a time she’d been this close to him, face-to-face since last summer, at least not in any serious way.

His eyes were the color of Tootsie Rolls and his skin looked like pure white milk.

 

Basically, the boy was dessert.

 

Rey gulped slightly as her eyes fell to his plump, raspberry-colored lips. Her own lips only became that color with gloss. No boy should have a mouth that looked like his.

She could barely drag her eyes away so, she just decided to watch his mouth greedily while she answered.

 

 

“You gonna ask me?” she retorted, intending to watch his lips while he answered.

 

“ _Fuck,_ ” he whispered, his thumb grazing her knuckles in his hand.

 

Rey’s eyes flew to his.

 

“Is that a yes?” she asked.

 

“Solo!” Akbar shouted from across the room. “Come help get these tables moved!”

 

Rey looked to see the room around them was emptying of tables and benches, their friends dispersed, the dinner buffet cleaned, and 80’s Theme Night preparing to begin in earnest.

 

Ben looked down at her and winked at Rey beside him before dropping her hand and squeezing her thigh as fast as possible. His stride was so long, he was across the room and dismantling a table in under a minute, Rey hopping up to dispose of her uneaten dinner leftovers and reapply gloss in the bathroom where she knew Paige, Rose and Jyn would be.

 

Even while looking into the paint-splattered, poorly-lit mirror, she could tell her cheeks were still glowing after Ben’s hands had been on her skin just earlier, and she blushed even more furiously as Jyn and Paige flanked her in the bathroom.

 

“What?” she asked, feigning innocence.

 

“What- _what_?” Paige asked, eyeing her pointedly.

 

Rey shrugged and continued applying the gloss, peering intently into the mirror.

 

“We saw you,” Jyn sang with a hip bump to Rey’s side. “We know you two were playing footsie under the table,” she teased.

 

“We were not,” Rey retorted in faux indignation before pausing and adding, “we were holding hands.” She shouted as they broke into gales of giggles, “it’s totally different!”

 

“Oh you’ve got it bad!” Rose giggled. “Holding hands with Kylo Ren!”

 

“Oh my God, _stop_ ,” Rey begged. “He’ll kill you if he hears that name!”

 

Paige and Rose howled with laughter while Rey rolled her eyes and pulled her Madonna t-shirt lower over her exposed shoulder.

 

“Hey, _he’s_ the one who had the angsty emo phase 3 years ago, not me!” Paige said with glee as she chuckled and held her hands aloft in innocence, reaching for the gloss.

 

“Yeah, well, he’s not Kylo Ren anymore,” Rey said as she smacked her lips together, amazed they were barely strawberry tinted, thinking about Ben’s berry-stained pout.

 

“No, he is not,” Jyn nodded in agreement. “And you just keep telling yourself that later tonight when you finally make out with him,” she smirked while playfully shoving Rey’s shoulder as they walked out of the bathroom.

 

“I never said I’m gonna make out with him,” Rey argued in a whisper as they re-entered the mess hall, the disco ball spinning silver flashes across the dark space that made it feel more magical than anyone would have imagined possible ten minutes earlier.

 

Rey’s eyes located Ben without trying.

 

He was finishing the bench-stacking across the hall at the far end, and her lips parted as she watched him lift 10-foot wooden benches easily, lifting them to chest height to pile them atop another to make space on the floor for the night’s activities.

She glimpsed a sliver of smooth white skin beneath his black t-shirt where it peeked out of his jeans and noted his flexed triceps and his perfect ass when he reached to secure the stack of benches and Jyn chortled beside her as she watched Rey, watching Ben from a distance, his back to them all.

 

“Uh huh,” she answered with an exaggerated eye roll. “Sure.”

 

***********


	4. June 2010 Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> next chapter, we move on. Enjoy age 16 while you can.

 

June 2010

  


_Ben_

 

There was no shortage of rules at Camp Sweetwood but, none as emphatically insisted upon as the one they were all communally breaking right now.

 

Smoking, drinking, firearms, recreational drugs and all other contraband were expressly prohibited. It was right there on the packing lists provided to campers as they prepared their luggage when preparing to come to camp every summer.

 

Two years ago, a 9th grader was sent home for bringing a BB gun in his duffle bag when he used it to terrorize the 6 girls’ cabins late one night after an evening of scary stories around the camp bonfire, thinking it would be a great laugh.

Three of the 5th grade girls thought he was a crazed escaped convict from one of the scarier tales they’d heard that night and they’d fled into the woods around the lake for 7 hours, requiring the local police, the sherrif’s department and the state highway patrol to all help canvas the lakeside for them. They’d been found, dirty and tired but unharmed the next morning but, the boy, Aaron Dornemann had been sent home that day.

 

He was legend now.

 

After that, no one doubted an infraction could send you home from camp at a moments’ notice and no one had tried any big gags.

 

The worst Ben’s cabin mates would do was sneak down to the docks after Light Out to laugh and hang out, skipping rocks over the dark lake and pushing one another nearly but, never completely into the water, content to be adventurous and slightly rebellious as opposed to reckless or outright dangerous.

No one got hurt and no one ever knew except Ackbar who had caught them once last summer when they were nearly back to their cabin.

 

He’d seemed pretty unbothered by the whole thing, and they didn’t even get cabin demerits.

 

The most solemnly upheld and vigorously regarded rule at Sweetwood however, was the one they were all guilty of breaking right now where they sat, the Hummingbird cabin girls haphazardly scattered around the Eagle boys’ cabin in the dark, laughing and chatting, far past midnight after the theme night festivities had ended.

 

 _“Shh!”_ Hux had hissed over the muffled giggles the group tried to contain as the eight of them made their way from their respective cabins to the docks at 11:30.

 

“ _Shh_ yourself!” Finn had countered as he shoved Hux in the shoulder good naturedly while they all trekked to the water’s edge.

 

“If you guys don’t keep it down, Holdo and Ackbar are gonna bust us!” Hux complained as they stomped through the woods, the dizziness of the evening and adrenaline rush of sneaking out of their cabins filling their veins with carbonation and their heads with cotton candy, somehow making everything feel bubbling and sweet, impossible to contain.

 

“Hux, shut up,” Ben said, slapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder roughly, speaking loudly enough they all heard him and softly enough to take control of the situation. “You’re being louder than the rest of us combined shushing us,” turning over his shoulder to raise his eyebrows and dramatically hold a finger to his lips while shushing them silently as a group, as well.

 

He glimpsed Rey’s bright eyes on his while he scanned the group around him from one end to the other and he felt his heart swing between his lungs violently, luckily turning his head to avoid smacking his face into a low-hanging branch at the last moment.

He caught it with one hand and held it above his head, making space for every one to step underneath easily, one after another, Rey’s eyes catching his and her single hand barely graze the chest of his t-shirt when she stepped past him, under the canopy of branches his arms held high.

 

 _Oh yeah,_ he thought, feeling his inquiries confirmed, giving himself permission to gloat and smirk in the dark while he trudged up the small hill bringing up the rear of their party. _She’s into me. I’m definitely kissing her tonight._

 

He’d begun wondering last summer when they had KP together, rinsing and stacking dishes side-by-side in the noisy, industrial camp kitchen for a week where they’d buried the hatchet, told a few secrets and shared a daily purple popsicle.

He’d started to think perhaps it was possible when they’d sat up late and worked on puzzles together in the mess hall until 3 AM one night when Ben had bronchitis two weeks later, all the fluorescent lights burning brightly and a counselor coming to check on them every hour, Ben so thankful she’d agreed to be the friend who agreed to stay with him while he took breathing treatments all night.

He’d been almost certain when they’d said goodbye last summer, Rey looking up at him like that, like she knew he wanted to kiss her and she wouldn’t stop him but, he’d lost his nerve as soon as he’d touched her and felt her lean in, knew he’d only disappoint her and anyway, all their friends were standing there close by.

 

He’d been pretty sure last year when they were 15 and then this month…ever since they got here this summer…well, let’s just say their friends’ proximity would not dissuade him now.

Ben no longer gave a fuck who was around or what they thought, he was kissing Rey tonight.

 

He was sure.

 

“Shit!” he heard Poe spit, jerking his mind into the present where all 8 of them piled haphazardly behind one another at the edge of the treeline that faced the docks.

 

“What?” Finn asked as they all leaned in closely to peer through the trees covertly and see what was happening.

 

The golf cart used by the counselors to patrol the grounds was right there, lazily parked at the front step of the dock and no less then three counselors sat at the far end of the dock, lounging in adirondack chairs, laughing loudly, clearly enjoying themselves and looking not a bit like they were leaving anytime soon.

 

“What now?” Paige asked aloud, realizing they’d need a Plan B.

 

“I guess we come back another night,” Rose said sadly, earning an almost-unanimous _“no!”_ from several people followed by a hissed _“shh!”_ from Hux.

 

“We could hike over to the slide and sit at the top of the steps,” Jyn offered. “No one will look over there this late at night.”

 

“Not enough room for all of us up there,” Poe pointed out.

 

“Yeah, and what if one of us slides down…. _whoosh_!” Rey said with a grin, waving her arms in an imitation of helplessness garnering a giggle from Rose.

 

 _Fuck, she's so cute,_ Ben thought, watching her blink up at him where he was smiling a tiny smile at her.

 

“How about the laundromat?” Finn suggested. “Plenty of space and it’s always nice and toasty in there.”

 

“Yeah, and it smells like Snuggle and Tide,” Jyn agreed.

 

“Too bright,” Hux argued, “lights never go out in there. We may as well have a neon arrow blinking over our heads that says _‘we’re all out of bed after Lights Out and we’re all in here together!’_ ”

 

“Well, how ‘bout you just come back to our cabin?” Paige asked. “We can just hang out on the porch and if we hear anyone coming, you guys run.”

 

“Nah,” Poe said thoughtfully, turning to walk back towards the cabins, everyone falling in step behind slowly. “You girls come over to our cabin instead,” he retorted. “We won’t last ten minutes on a porch without getting caught, you’re so loud,” he said, dropping an arm around Paige’s shoulders and tugging her closely with a grin,” but, we’ll hide you in our cabin and they’ll never know.”

 

“I dunno…” Rose cautioned, her brow furrowing. “If we get caught, we’re in mega trouble. Like, _mega_ trouble.”

 

“Just for a little while,” Finn urged her, looking at her while she walked in step beside him. “Come on, Rosie,” he smiled.

 

Ben saw Rose smile at Finn and with no other arguments voiced, they all walked silently towards the boys’ cabin. Ben found himself at the back of the pack, and Rey slowed to walk next to him, her hand reaching the slightest away from her body when he caught it and laced their fingers together, earning himself a smile from her when she looked up at him shyly.

 

If his heart didn’t quit doing that when she looked at him, he was going to need a fucking doctor, it bounced so wildly. Like someone stepped on a pedal in his heart and floored it.

He’d known her long enough, Ben knew he’d never seen Rey look at anyone else the way she looked up at him.  

 

Just locking eyes with her knocked his heart around in his chest like a dribbled basketball.

No telling what kissing her would do.

 

One by one, everyone crept into the boys’ cabin, deliberately breaking the single most religiously upheld rule at Sweetwood: **No One of Opposite Gender in Cabins.**

 

Rey tugged away from Ben’s hand slightly as they approached the screen door, watching it slam lightly where Rose dropped it after entering the cabin.

 

She bit her lip and wrinkled her eyes in concern, her dimples peeking out at Ben where he saw them hiding in her smooth, freckled cheeks.

 

“C’mon,” he said gently, tossing his head the direction of the door, his other hand stuffed deeply into his jeans pocket so he wouldn’t use it to drag her inside.

 

“I don’t wanna get in trouble,” she warned, whining slightly as she hedged, trying to make up her mind.

 

Ben tried very hard not to make a dozen arguments to help talk her into coming in.

 

_We’ll keep it down._

_No one will know._

_I’ll take the fall._

_Don’t worry._

_It’ll be fine._

_Trust me._

 

Instead, he raised his eyebrows slightly and smiled.

“Please?” he asked, watching her decide.

 

He squeezed her fingers slightly and shrugged slightly, willing his shoulders to unknot.

 

“It’s okay,” he said, “if you don’t want to…”

 

“I do,” she cut him off. “I do.

 

“I got you,” Ben told her with a relieved smile as she took a wide step towards him, catching their joined hands in her free one, smiling up at him as she joined him. “Fuck it,” she said under her breath as they walked through the door.

 

**********

 

Jyn hung half off Hux’s bed on her belly, head and left arm dangling beside Hux where he sat propped against the bunk behind him, his fingers tangling with hers in clear view of everyone around them.

 

Rose and Finn sat on Ben’s bed beside Hux’s, a neatly-folded, cross-legged pair, their knees touching and palms alternating behind them flat on the bed and in their own laps.

 

Paige laid sprawled on the floor, tossing a tennis ball up in the air to Poe beside her, both flat on their backs and routinely missing the ball they threw as close to the ceiling as possible in the center of the cabin.

 

And Ben’s head laid on the pillow he had tossed to Rey which she placed on her lap when she sat cross-legged on the floor against Poe’s bunk, her hands threading through his hair while she laughed and talked above him, facing their friends, his hands laced over his chest and ankles crossed where his long legs extended in front of himself.

He smiled happily, pretty perfectly relaxed, the warm summer night outside the cabin quiet except for crickets, the dark deepening as the Michigan woods turned away from the sun further.

 

Every once in a while, Hux would shush people or Poe would jump up and check the cabin door and everyone would freeze, terrified to be found by counselors but, so far, so good.

 

“Let’s play a game,” Poe suggested. “Seven minutes in heaven.”

 

“What are we, in middle school?” Hux asked with an eye roll. “Nobody plays that,” he insisted.

 

“Aw come on, man, you just don’t think anybody’ll kiss you,” Finn taunted, laughing.

 

“Ha ha, very funny,” Hux replied, an exaggerated whine in his tone.

 

“I’ll kiss you, Huxy,” Jyn said, watching as a surprised Hux turned quickly to see her where she sat laid behind him on his bed.

A collective _“oooooohhhh”_ grew as Jyn tugged his t-shirt collar towards herself and kissed him squarely on the lips, their kiss lasting far longer than expected either by the circle of friends or by Hux, as proven by his flushed face and breathless posture when he returned to his seat a moment later, straightening his collar and smirking proudly at Poe and Finn who whistled and laughed while he enjoyed himself.

 

Ben had no interest in playing a game.

A game meant you had a chance of losing and Ben was not interested in losing. Especially not at something this important.

 

He slid his arms behind himself, up onto Rey’s knees which were beside his ears where he lay in her lap. He widened his fingers several times over her kneecaps simultaneously, and kept his eyes forward as Paige and Rose teased Jyn about kissing Hux. It seemed like the jury was out on further game-playing among their friends but, Ben was tuned out and on a mission.

He was done waiting on a moment to present itself.

 

He slid his hands up her thighs, reaching till his arms were extended completely and he lay completely spread out on the floor, covering a huge swath of space, claiming an invisible circle around them, space just for himself and Rey, some unspoken claim-staking ritual taking place without his awareness.

 

He looked up at Rey where he lay in her lap as he slid his hands up her back, his fingertips sliding over the thin fabric of her cotton t-shirt, her body heat palpable beneath, the slim band of her bra interrupting his journey higher as he passed, his groin taking note causing him to adjust his position on the floor where he lay silently.

 

When he reached her shoulders, Rey looked down at him, tucking her hair behind her ear, pulling it over one shoulder as she looked down at him, hazel eyes a deep cinnamon at this angle, the light obliterated behind her as she fell forward to see down into Ben’s eyes, shadowing them both.

 

“C’mere,” he whispered when he caught her eyes as she leaned over more, his hand able to reach behind her head and pull her down to himself, her lips descending like a paper airplane magically landing on its target as she finally met his mouth with her own.

 

Her lips were like everything else about her, smooth and silky and firm and she tasted like mint gum and Cherry Coke and sweet girl, and Ben was immersed in her magic immediately, her hair falling like a curtain over his chest, his head leaned back into her body where she curved down over him, shielding him from their friends, from getting busted, from reality.

 

From everything.

 

Ben vaguely heard the chorus of their friends singing out a taunting, unison wail of accusatory needling, clearly having picked up on Ben and Rey making out in their midst but, Ben just held Rey’s head steady with the palm of his hand while he kissed her, lifting his free hand above his torso and flipping everyone around them the middle finger without removing his mouth from Rey’s.

 

This was too good, it was too perfect.

She was too delicious and too willing and too pretty and he was so close to her - her tits were just behind his head and her pussy just below his neck and her face so close he could smell her and taste her and run his hands in her hair and he’d waited _all year_ for this moment.

 

_These idiots could suck it._

 

The others piped down after a minute, only talking long enough to throw another pillow at them on the floor before moving on and ignoring them where they sat kissing and Ben took advantage, wondering how long Rey would let him get away with this.

An hour?

Two?

He felt pretty sure he could make out with her all night if she’d let him.

 

Rey lifted her lips from Ben and stared down into his eyes with a shy smile, leaning up and stretching, rolling her neck a little before looking back down at Ben in her lap again. Ben ran one hand down her arm and laced his fingers with hers, still watching her and placed the other over his chest, feeling his heart race under his palm.

 

“You okay?” he asked quietly, desperate to have a good review from her on this matter, hopeful she’d liked it and if not, hoping she wouldn’t tell Poe, Finn and Hux.

 

“Yeah,” she said with a fresh grin, rolling her eyes to the ceiling slightly, bending back down again after a second like it was a secret shared between friends. “Are you?”

 

“Hell yeah,” he answered, enthusiastically. “I wasn’t done yet, though,” he said with a smirk, tugging their laced hands towards his chest, forcing her to lean over him.

 

This time, she ran her free hand down over his chest as she leaned close to kiss him back, her lips sliding between his and her tongue licking into the top of his mouth as he slipped his own tongue into hers. Both their hands ended up laced over his chest, her nose skimming his chin and his doing the same to hers, ravaging her mouth his own as much as he pleased, taking his time and learning her completely.

 

“Rey, come on,” Jyn said from above, beyond where Ben lay on the cabin floor in Rey’s lap, still kissing her. “We gotta get back to the cabin.”

 

Ben had no idea whether it had been four minutes or forty they’d been kissing he was so lost in her, and when Rey lifted her face enough to tuck her hair behind her ear again, Ben opened his eyes to see her rub her nose affectionately against his in a farewell.

 

He sat up with a grunt, cracking his neck as he stood before offering Rey a hand as she stood from the floor, dusting herself off. Rey walked briskly to the door of the cabin, tearing her hand from his quickly as she picked up speed to catch up with the other girls who were already halfway out the door, and Ben didn’t even have time to figure out what happens now.

 

Would tomorrow be different?

Would it be awkward?

Would she let him kiss her again?

 

He crossed the floor in three strides and grabbed for her hand at the last moment before she walked out the door, causing her to slow.

 

“Hey,” he said, fighting a crack in his voice, unsure what he would say next.

 

Rey blinked up at him for a moment before leaning up on her toes and pulling his head to her, kissing him right there in front of the other guys and God and everybody, her front pressed up against his in a fireworks display set to perfectly-timed, choreographed pyrotechnics.

He was definitely kissing her this way next time.

 

“Hey,” she said firmly, pushing his chest back slightly with a giggle as she told him, “go to bed.”

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he offered as she pulled her hand from his and walked through the screen door, his hand silencing it before it could slam.

 

“Yes you will,” she said, before taking off in a jog to meet up with the other girls, clustered in a huddle where they walked to their cabin.

 

 _Yes I will,_ he thought, as he turned to get ready for bed with a victorious smile.

_Yes, I will._

 

*********


	5. June 2015 Rey

 

  

June 2015

  
  


_Rey_

 

“Don’t turn around. There she is.”

 

Rey stiffens as Paige leans in and whispers close to her ear, cautioning her. Her back straightens as she inhales sharply through her nose, her vision narrowing to the opposite wall, the water and iced tea decanters suddenly fascinating as she lifts her chin and elongates her neck.

 

Swallowing, she takes stock of her emotional state.

Is she about to cry?

Run?

Scream?

 

 _Maybe,_ she thinks, _all of the above, in that order_ but no, instead she just turns to look at Paige in the eye beside her, and the two friends exchange a knowing look.

 

Jyn is here and Rey needs to put on her game face.

 

“Hey bitches!” Jyn chirps, not two minutes later as she rounds on the table, tossing her bag onto the long wooden table between them and seating herself astride the opposite bench facing Paige and Rey. “How the hell are you two cuties?”

 

She’s re-pierced her nose since last summer, there’s a hoop where years before there was only a stud.

Irritatingly, Rey realizes it suits her.

 

The apples of her cheeks are pink with a summertime glow already, a wildflower bouquet tattoo of pastel flowers and butterflies peeking out from under her tank top straps, collarbone to elbow on her right side and her hair, lightened to a color they’ve never seen on her before accentuates her bright eyes.

 

She looks good this summer.

_Damn it._

Would it kill her, just once to show up looking less than gorgeous?

 

Rey feels herself beginning to sulk in 0.2 seconds flat upon taking her in.

 

“Hey,” Paige says, coolly. “You’re tan,” she offers without excitement. She barely looks up from her Cobb salad, eyeing Jyn openly when she finally does.

 

“Hiking,” Jyn explains breathlessly. “In the Rockies. Breathtaking!” she enthuses, pulling out her phone and scrolling towards her photo collection, moving to prove her point. “You have to go if you haven’t ever, I’m telling you. So fucking beautiful. Really, look. Look,” she encourages them, holding up her phone.

 

Rey wipes her mouth on a napkin and looks pointedly at the phone, back to Jyn’s smile and back to the phone again.

 

“Pretty,” she replies with a profoundly bored tone.

 

“Awesome,” Paige parrots.

 

“Hmph,” Jyn sighs, depositing the phone into her bag again and grinning, looking at them openly, happily, without a care in the world like always. “Oh! Lemme go get some food. Be right back,” she says, leaving her purse on the table and jumping up to go to the buffet line.

 

Tomorrow night, once the campers have all arrived, that line would be considerably longer and they’d have more time to finish dinner, maybe missing out on Jyn’s momentary return altogether but, tonight Rey and Paige have a scant few minutes till she returns, apparently oblivious to their reluctancy to welcome her.

 

“Want me to untwist the salt shakers so the salt pours onto her food, like when we were kids?” Paige asks Rey under her breath, offering to help with a prank.

 

Rey snorts. “Yeah, right. Maybe tonight we could freeze all her bras,” she answers, stabbing at her salad.

 

Paige shoves her slightly and takes another bite of her food before muttering, “you gonna be okay?”

 

Rey nods, feeling less than certain and numbly stares down at the bunch of lettuce and bacon on her fork.

 

This is uncharted territory. She actually has no idea if she’s going to be okay, or if she can face what this summer holds but, she isn’t ready to think about all that. Tonight, she just needs to get through dinner. Dinner she can handle. Probably.

 

“Just don’t leave without me,” she responds, watching from under her lowered lashes as Jyn’s legs approach their table again.

 

“Totally,” Paige promises.

 

Jyn sits opposite them again, her words racing as she tells Rey and Paige all about her ride here, how she was basically hitchhiking the last 30 miles after getting dropped off at Marriton but, it was actually very cool and she scored some cigarettes off the guy who drove, a Vietnam vet which means Jyn got an earful of great stories in the car.

 

Rey glances up at Jyn while she talks and considers her, thinks about how someone she knew so well once, loved so much could be this clueless, just rambling on about hiking and Vietnam and the cigarettes while Rey stares at her, wondering if she ever really knew her at all.

 

It’s amazing how some people can run at the mouth and create something akin to a conversation without ever stopping to realize they’re the only one talking.

 

Rey clears her throat and moves to stand, pulling her legs out from under the table.

 

“Well, I need to get unpacked,” she explains, cutting Jyn off as soon as she hears the woman take a breath.

 

“Yeah, me too,” Paige agrees, accompanying her.

 

“I think I’m right next to you guys again this year!” Jyn says excitedly, swallowing quickly to reply, her eyes alight with mirth. “Almost like old times!”

 

“Yeah…” Paige says, looking to Rey and back to Jyn, “sorta.”

 

“It’s so good seeing you guys,” Jyn says, sounding sincere, a bright smile on her face as she tilts her head to the side.

 

“Yeah, you too,” Rey says, immediately kicking herself as she walks away.

 

Why does she do that?

Why does she say something she doesn’t at all mean?

Why doesn’t she say anything closer to the truth, why doesn’t she say something brave?

 

_I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing you._

_You make a mess of other people._

_You ruined everything with your selfishness._

_I trusted you._

 

A tornado of angry comments she won’t voice swirl viciously as she scrapes her plate into the trash can, the salad remnants falling on top of the discarded piles of lettuce at the bottom, the dressing sliding off the plate lazily as she pushes at it savagely with her fork.

 

“It’s _not_ good seeing her,” Rey mumbles to Paige beside her as they walk to the double doors.

It’ll be dark in a while and Rey will need mosquito spray but, it’s still in her luggage back in the shared room across campus where she’d deposited her belongings and met up with Paige earlier. The two friends head there instinctively, the ingrained schedule of camp life moving them in memorized tandem without discussion.

 

Rey reaches to push through the door and stumbles forward slightly as her center of balance is knocked off kilter, the door pulling back before she can connect. Instead, she lifts her eyes to see him - _Ben_ \- in the flesh, walk directly into her path like an incoming freight train.

 

It’s been so long and yet, it might have been yesterday the last time she saw him for how quickly her heart lurches into instantaneous motion, cobwebs flying and a cacophony of emotions and memories assaulting her in a heartbeat, an orchestra of chaos warming up in the space it takes for her to freeze.

Last year, the missing summer, she’d seen him once, only from a distance. He sat on the dock outside his mother’s cabin at the far end of the grounds, his back to the camp, his broad shoulders unmistakable in the sunshine, his black hair tucked around his ears, shorter than it was now, his legs handing over the edge above the water, only half his body even visible.

 

Now, he’s standing in front of her in this very room. Again.

 

Was he always this tall?

 

She cranes her neck to see up at him, avoiding his eyes and looking no higher than his mouth - _God, she knew that mouth so well, that perfect, kissable, beautiful mouth and it looks exactly the same_ \- and, in the space of 2 more seconds her traitorous brain flashes to the worst memory, the one that still steals her breath with pain and she tears her gaze away abruptly.

This isn’t fair.

He was always handsome but, this - his height and stature and his scent and his familiar aura and his presence and his proximity…no way. This is too much. It’s not okay and it’s not _fair_.

 

Rey feels her throat knot, tears threatening to sting her eyes and she pushes around him without speaking, without eye contact, without listening to Paige greet him. She has to get out of here. It’s too hard. She’ll do it later.

She has all summer to be awkward and tortured, why subject herself to it before she’s ready?

 

Clearly, she’s not ready.

She thought she was ready, she’d pep talked herself all week, she’d planned and she’d rehearsed mentally and she’d convinced herself but, apparently she’d been a fucking fool or worse, a willful liar because she’s seen him now and yeah - she is very much _not_ ready.

 

_Shit._

 

With a harsh shove, the doors swing open widely at her vehemence and then close mercifully behind her again and Rey takes a steadying breath. The gravel welcomes her with its usual crunch, the satisfying noise of movement drowning out the drumming heartbeat in her ears, and she shoves her hands deeply into her overall pockets as she lifts her head to catch her breath.

 

There are fireflies tonight.

 

It’s dusk, the sun is setting over a western sky somewhere, the lights illuminated over the path that leads from the mess hall to the lanes of cabins. The fireflies dart between Rey and the camp around her, pinpricks of floating light darting around haphazardly as darkness falls slowly over Sweetwood, little friends come to remind her some things change and some things stay the same.

 

They aren’t last summer’s fireflies but, here they are again, a new generation, just like the campers who will arrive tomorrow and take their place in the parade of childhood known as summer camp just as Rey and her friends once did.

Paige walks up to Rey and they fall into step as they head for the counselor hall, crickets singing as the fireflies scatter, a path clearing for Paige and Rey as they walk up the gravel path, the steep hill burning their legs slightly as they climb.

 

“I said hi to Ben,” Paige said, unnecessarily.

 

“Mmm,” Rey affirmed.

 

“He looks good,” Paige continued. “Tired maybe? Bags under his eyes, ya know, like he gets sometimes but, ya know. Good.”

 

Rey looks up and studies the trees ahead, focusing on not turning around and going to find him for herself, see for herself. She could have seen him, she could have looked into his eyes if she’d been stronger, more prepared. Maybe if she hadn’t just been sitting with Jyn and her stupid beautiful nose ring and her stupid beautiful suntan and her stupid beautiful blonde hair, maybe she would have been able to throw her shoulders back and see his eyes, too, tonight.

 

She already regrets blowing that opportunity.

One missing summer was difficult enough.

 

Rey doesn’t want to imagine another.

 

“He turned around and watched you leave,” Paige said quietly, and Rey felt her watching her face as they walked.

 

“I wasn’t ready,” Rey said. “I - I don’t know what I need but, that was….I just wasn’t ready.”

 

“It’s okay. You don’t have to be. It’s okay,” Paige confirmed. “You’ve got time.”

 

“Yeah, I’ve got all summer,” Rey comforted herself, kicking a rock out of their path as they took the fork in the road.

 

“All summer,” Paige repeated, nodding.


	6. June 2015 Ben

 

 

 

 

 

June 2015

 

_Ben_

If _he’d_ spoken to Holdo or Ackbar like that when _he_ was a camper, he’d have gotten his ass handed to him and been on Kitchen Patrol, scrubbing dishes and stinking like industrial-strength soap for a month.

 

 _Little shit,_ Ben thought as he watched the surly 12 year-old still grumbling under his breath while he loped away towards his cabin.

 

Was it always this hot in June?

Maybe taking the summer before to trek through the Appalachian Trail had made him forget how truly sticky a Michigan summer in the woods can be.

 

A dip in the lake sounds good but, then again, that was different when he was a camper, too. There were never boats on the lake when Ben was growing up on the grounds, never anything like waves to deal with because of passing craft unless Sweetwood was the cause, trailing screaming teenagers around on kneeboards and oversized tubes behind the aging, white two-seater boat.

 

Nowadays, the lake was rarely still, rarely unbothered, rarely placid anymore and it made Ben less interested in jumping into the green water depths.

Everything else was ruffled and out of sorts and wrong, it sort of made sense the water was, too but it didn't seem inviting the way it once did when they'd jumped in with their friends after lights out or skinnydipped or splashed around after soaking up rays on the deck, flat on their backs telling jokes till their bellies ached. 

He'd just stay hot.

 

The pool was out of the question, too.

Too many kids, too much fucking noise, too much nonsense and too much attention. When you’re the tallest guy around and you hop into the pool to cool down, you’re attacked and Ben was not up for that right now, tossing kids off the deck into the water and launching smaller 6th graders into the deep end like human adolescent basketballs.

 

 _Fuck, I sound like my father,_ he thinks with chagrin.

 

When did he get so old?

How does 21 feel so old?

 

 _Oh, right,_ he thought, movement in the trees catching his eye as he descended the hill towards the mess hall, a familiar form filling his senses as he made out who it was. _That’s how. You fuck up your life, you age._

It wasn’t in any book Ben had read in college but, he was living proof.

 

There she was.

All 5 feet and 7 inches of her, a living sunbeam, walking through the woods where they’d made out, between the trees they’d chased each other through, within earshot of the pool they’d clowned around in together as kids.

 

 _“Rey!”_ he shouted, before he could stop himself.

He had no idea where he was heading after that, he had no plan, he just had to eject her name from his mouth as soon as he could, the sweetness of her name burning a hole through his tongue, demanding he shout to her through the woods.

 

She slowed and her head jerked towards him, and he held his breath a little as he watched her stop completely.

 

Had she planned it like that? For the sun to stream down onto her where she stood like something heavenly, her t-shirt and shorts and Converse, her ponytail and the loop of keys around her wrist so familiar it knifed through something in his chest fast and sharp.

She looked skittish as a raccoon while he approached so, he averted his eyes to navigate the brush and branches that cracked under his Nikes as he walked towards her.

 

 _Stay,_ he begged silently. _Wait. Please._

 

He came to a stop 8 feet away, more space than was completely necessary, further than he could reach even with his long arms but, he couldn’t scare her off and in the last week this was the closest he’d come to getting her to talk with him.

 

“Where you heading?” he ventured, catching her eyes with his own, capturing her whole attention again, her complete awareness. That thing - that tightly-wound, thickly-corded rope that always connected them was just a thread now, just a slim fiber tied from Ben to her but, it was intact as it always had been, strong as steel and direct as an arrow.

She looked him dead in the eye, her even look up into his eyes a better gift than anything he’d been given for any holiday in years and he watched as she processed, could almost see the gears turning in her skull.

 

“I have to go turn in the speed boat keys to the office,” she said, her eyes unable to hold his gaze, darting to the path she’d been on.

 

“K,” he said, coming closer and putting his hands in his pockets, an offer of submission.

 

“I…I have to walk up there,” she said, motioning towards the building up the hill, the one his mother and Maz were likely to be holed up in, the one with the best AC on campus.

 

“Can I walk with you?” he asked quickly, too invested to worry about seeming anxious, willing to look foolish.

 

He was a fool for her, he always has been, _always,_ who cares if she knows it to be true? He wants her to know it. He wants her to know it's still the same.

 

“Sure,” she shrugged as she met his eyes again.

 

Ben turned back the way he’d come and matched her footsteps as they ascended.

He used to tease her about this, how small her strides were, how small her feet were.

He tries not to remember it as they walk but, the ghosts are all around them here in the woods. He can almost hear their voices.

 

“I didn’t know you’d be here this summer,” she tells him, her eyes glued to the path they walk on as they climb the wooded path.

 

He can’t tell if that means she wishes he wasn’t here or she’s glad he is.

He decided to only take it at face value.

 

“Yeah, well, one summer hiking the Appalachian Trail was enough. It was hard,” he admits.

 _Understatement,_ he thinks.

 

“Yeah?” she asks, sneaking a glance at him before looking back at the path under their feet.

 

“Yeah,” he tells her. “It was a beast. I didn’t get the whole thing done.”

 

Rey nods in response and the leaves crunch under their shoes.

 _Talk,_ he prods himself. _Take the shot._

 

“I missed this place, oddly enough,” he says, adding quietly, “I missed _you_.”

 

Rey stops walking and leaves her eyes where they are, watching the ground under her gaze as if a secret was written there. If it is, Ben can’t see it but, he’d give about anything he has for Rey to look up at him, into his eyes. He wants to promise her a yacht or a horse or a planet or something in exchange for her eyes on him again but, he just watches as the hot June air around them lifts the free strands of her hair around her right ear, tickling her jawline.

 

She takes a huge breath through the nose and lifts her face calmly, a queen about to bestow a ruling and she grants him a stay of execution.

 

“I missed you,” she says as she looks up at him.

 

He should smile.

He’s so relieved he should smile but, even this admission of hers breaks his heart somehow, so he just looks at her sweet face, her precious face and he thinks about how goddamn much he’s missed her and he decides not to force himself to smile.

Instead, they begin walking the hill again and he risks coming a step closer towards her.

God, she feels the same beside him, tall enough to fit under his chin if he were to wrap his arms around her, small enough to toss over his shoulder and run down the hill to his room, to find a bed where he could feel her underneath him again, run his hands over her skin again, kiss her mouth and lick her breasts again, feel her candied cunt hot and sweet as maple syrup around him again, chew through one another's facades and tear down each other's walls and lay out one another naked under the sheer worship they cover one another's bodies with again, hide from the world and misunderstandings and separation with her again until they run out of time. 

 

 _Fuck, that’s what hearing her say ‘I missed you’ does to me,_ he thinks.

Still.

 

“Ben,” Ackbar calls from behind them, ambling up the hill on the ancient golf cart. “I need a hand with the slide decking, hop in, would ya?”

The golf cart stops and waits a couple feet behind them and Ben turns to Ackbar behind the wheel and back to Rey again.

 

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees reluctantly. “I’ll, uh,” he wracks his brain to think of a connection to offer Rey and comes up empty. Why didn’t he have a plan? He should have had a plan.

 

“Go on,” Rey suggests with the barest of smiles, just a hint of teasing, beginning to walk up the hill again. “I’ll see you later.”

 

“Promise?” he asks her retreating form as he climbs in beside Ackbar, the cart depressing under his weight.

 

“I’m here all summer,” she calls behind her without turning.

 

Ben smiles to himself.

Good enough.

 

Ackbar pulls the golf cart hard left and starts back down the hill, retracing the steps Ben had made on foot earlier.

 

“So, that’s still a thing, eh?” he casually tosses out. “You and her?”

 

Ben looks out at the lake beside them as they whizz by, the whirr of the golf cart the only noise as the breeze whips through Ben’s hair while they speed down the hill.

 

“It will never _not_ be a thing,” he tells the old man.

 

She’s the only thing.

He thought wrong, once.

He’d been wrong and he’d doubted her and he’d been so convinced and then so fucking broken.

He thought he knew what he saw.

He’d thought he could get past her, get around her, replace her, forget her, remove her after what he thought he'd seen but, she was always the only thing.

 

She still is.


	7. June 2011 Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the people wanted smut.  
> the people get smut.  
> Rating change. 
> 
> I need to write True North but, this muse showed up.  
> What can you do?

 

 

June 2011

 

_Rey_

 

School friends were one thing but, there was just something different about camp friends.

Camp friends were like extended family. Like cousins but, even better.

 

You might have taken almost a year off from seeing each other but, when you got back together again you picked right back up where you’d left off with camp friends. This was Rey’s seventh summer at Camp Sweetwater, and every year the same group of kids appeared like clockwork.

 

Finn, Poe, Hux and Ben, Jyn, the Tico sisters and Rey.

 

Sometime around 9th grade they’d somehow formed a clique and without addressing it directly, they’d designed a system by which all 8 of of them smoothly segued into one cohesive mechanism of friendship every summer as soon as they stepped onto the camp grounds.

 

Where they’d been enemies as 6th graders, they found themselves drawn to one another as friends.

Where they’d found each other undesirable and incomprehensible, they slowly grew to cultivate attractions and curiosity.

 

It was only a matter of time before they’d each coupled up. Maybe they didn’t stop to consider how much of their pairing was a result of Darwinian pruning versus a perfect rhythm of compatibility but, either way she was pleased as punch they’d all coupled up so perfectly.

 

Poe and Paige

Ben and herself

Finn and Rose

Hux and Jyn

 

If anyone had designs on a different partner, they didn’t say so, at least not since they’d all officially coupled up and started frequently making out in one another’s presence last summer.

Maybe they’d traded affections for a variety of camp boys or girls in their younger years but, by last year, the summer before junior year everything pretty much shook out evenly.

 

This year, Rey had chewed her fingernails to nubs on the drive up to the Michigan camp grounds, wondering how things would be with Ben this summer.

Did he have a girlfriend?

Would he still be interested in her?

Could they pick up where they’d left off last summer?

 

She’d only had to think about it a few minutes once she’d finally arrived. Ben had swooped up behind her where she was waiting in line at the check-in table, grabbing her around the waist tightly, hoisting her high in the air while she squealed and her legs kicked, assured in a split second who it was.

By that evening he’d had his familiar, strong arms around her after the opening campfire when he stood in the dark with her outside the cabin.

 

“Were you seeing anyone at home?” he asked and then cut himself off. “Don’t tell me. Never mind. Don’t even tell me. Just be with me this summer. Come back to me. Be my girl. Be with me. I don’t care about anything or anyone else.”

 

Rey reached up and tugged his hair in her hands as she drew her arms around his broad shoulders. “Does that mean you’ve had another girl besides me this year?” she’d asked with a smile.

 

“Literally, you make me forget all other girls exist, Jackson,” he said as he got within striking distance of her lips for the first time in a year. “There’s only you for me. Deal?”

 

Rey reached onto her toes and sealed it with a kiss, an agreement of mutual surrender, her lips coming against his in certainty, crushed flower petals releasing a fragrance, herbs ground to powder with mortar and pestle, her chest pressed against his entirely, wholeness sweeping through her senses again like she hadn't felt in a year’s time.

 

Nothing else that came before mattered and nothing else that came after would compete with Ben so, this was an effortless concession.

Anything else was inconsequential.

Not that she’d delved deeply into any other relationship over the last year back at home.

Everyone back home knew she had a boyfriend in Michigan.

Or, at least that’s what she told them when she showed them a photo of herself in Ben’s lap, his arms around her middle and his mouth beside her cheek, smiling for the camera as they’d shared a final night around the campfire with their friends last summer.

 

“Rayo de sol,” Cassian laughed as he swung an arm around Rey’s shoulders lazily, “you are one funny chica, my friend. You seriously crack me up.”

 

Rey’s sides hurt from laughing so hard, her abdominals aching as she tried to calm herself, holding her stomach as she tried to recover from her laughing fit.

 

She and Jyn, plus Hux, Cassian and Poe headed back from the lake after a couple hours out on the boat. They’d taken turns showing off on the inner tube pulled behind the boat, water skiing and wiping out repeatedly by the time the boat towed them back to the dock. They were all dripping wet as they walked, their exhausted, sunburned bodies dragging beneath limp towels and bedraggled hair as they made their way to the cabins and they weren’t exactly being quiet about it, either.

 

Jyn hand was laced with Hux’s but, Rey hadn’t seen her actually look at him or speak to him once today. She did, however notice Jyn kept a hand close to Cassian, too, as they all marched down the hill to the cabins together, touching his arm whenever she had something funny to add, getting his attention as much as possible.

 

Rey had kept a close eye on Hux’s face all day on the boat, gauging his response to Jyn’s inclusion of Cassian.

 

He’d spent most of the day watching Jyn from under his ball cap, listening, observing.

 

Cassian had never ever been to Sweetwood before this summer and he hadn’t known anyone before setting foot on the grounds.

Leia had asked Ben to be something of an ambassador for Cassian, since he was the same age and Ben had agreed to show him around the grounds, introduce him to people.

 

Probably he hadn’t been prepared for Cassian to infiltrate his friend group as quickly as he had but, Rey thought he was a nice guy with a great sense of humor and anyway, why not? The more the merrier, she always said.

She had Ben this year, she was sure. Who cared if someone else joined the party? It didn’t effect her in the slightest, as far as Rey was concerned.

 

Maybe it threw their perfectly paired numbers off a bit as a group but, surely they were old enough to navigate the addition of one more person to their group without overturning the apple cart and upsetting the balance completely.

Besides, Rey personally hated feeling left out and she didn’t want that for a newcomer. It felt privileged and entitled to be rich in established, comfortable friendships when there was a lonely singleton nearby.

Her compassionate streak burned brightly for underdogs and tag-alongs and ne’er-do-wells and she swept Cassian into their friend circle as co-host in her natural role beside Ben immediately when she found out Cassian was a former foster youth.

 

As an adoptee herself, it struck her acutely how profoundly valuable it was to be able to share this common experience with someone else, to be able to compare survival stories and offer one another empathy, not just pity or sympathy.

 

Cassian was a natural fit with their group anyway, sunny and hilarious. He kept the stories rolling and the Spanglish sprinkled throughout his unbelievable tales of his adventures in life. He played basketball pick-ups with the guys and he accompanied the girls to the laundomat, teaching them to fold fitted sheets like the pros.

 

“You’re being insane,” Rey had told Ben when he’d walked her through the woods the week prior, holding her hand in his and trailing behind their friends on the way to lunch. “He is not. He’s just being friendly. I swear.”

 

“Okay, whatever,” Ben had retorted, sounding completely unconvinced and ready to argue. “I’m a guy and I’m telling you, he’s into you.”

 

Rey had rolled her eyes and gave him a searing side-eye as they walked through the trees, dappling sunlight peeking through the boughs around them.

“Give me a break,” she’d countered. “Just because _you’re_ into me doesn’t mean every other guy is, ya know.”

 

Ben smirked and watched her as they walked. “Oh, _I’m_ into you. Is that right?”

 

Rey taunted him back with a grin. “Uh, yeah,” she’d raised her eyebrows at him, “ _duh_.”

 

That conversation had ended when he’d reached for her and she jogged away, forcing Ben to chase her, ending with a kiss which pulled her off her feet, up into his arms and the air around her when she’d laughed victoriously and kissed him back, silencing him for good.

By the time they’d walked into the mess hall for lunch, Rey perched on Ben’s back, deposited at the buffet line where she turned and kissed him one last time on the lips before helping herself to a hot ham and swiss cheese sandwich, they’d caught up with their friends and everyone was there in the lunch line already to witness them separating only in order to eat.

 

Just like she preferred.

 

“Hey,” Finn called out beside her as they came to the bottom of the hill. “You okay, man?”

 

Rey lifted her eyes, wiping her tears of laughter away for good, her giggles bleeding into concern as she looked at the object of Finn’s greeting. Ben sat slumped slightly on the park bench at the bottom of the hill, his dark hair falling over his face, partly hiding him from them, his forearms on his thighs, hands laced under his gaze where he bent over them.

 

Breaking away from the group, out from under Cassian’s arm, she picked up the pace and crossed to him before anyone else, pulling her damp towel around her sopping wet t-shirt and shorts, her drenched bikini and strangled hair tighter, coming to stand directly in front of Ben, between his knees.

 

“Hey,” she whispered, “what’s wrong?” She placed her hands gently on his shoulders and bent down to his ear but, he kept his eyes on his feet, wordlessly.

 

Rey twisted over her shoulder and shooed the rest of the group on. “You guys go on. We’ll see you at later,” she prodded them, watching them leave, offers to stay with herself and Ben dismissed. She heard Cassian and Jyn’s voices once more as their friends moved further away, the laughter winding up again. Once they were alone, she tried again. “Ben. Baby, are you alright?”

 

Ben leaned his head into her stomach without meeting her eyes, her wet t-shirt cushioning the crown of his head where he planted it above her belly button and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Slowly, she leaned his shoulders away and once he had opened his body wider, she crawled into his lap, her legs across him as she seated herself on him, anchoring him into the bench, her arms around his neck while he breathed.

 

“My parents are getting divorced,” he mumbled after a few minutes, his face still obscured from her vision but, his hands around her tightening as he spoke.

 

She sighed deeply, her brow furrowing as she searched her heart for how to respond.

She’d only had a family for 10 years at this point, adopted at 7 by the Jacksons out of state care and they were such a wonderful couple, she couldn’t imagine them breaking up, let alone arguing. She’d never even heard them lift their voice to one another. She had no idea how to relate, what to say exactly but, she did know loss. And she did know Ben. 

 

“Oh Ben. I’m so sorry. Are you sure?” she asked. She’d never seen Leia and Han fight but, then again, she’d never seen them in the same room at the same time for more than a minute here or there. Leia ran camp every year since forever and Han travelled for work so they rarely functioned as a unit.

 

“That’s what he told me,” Ben answered solemnly. “I’m sure.”

 

He lifted his head and sniffed, his wet eyes meeting Rey’s, shattering her heart. She tilted her face and kissed his lips, swollen from tearfulness and hungry for comfort.

 

“Come on,” she said, standing and taking his hand.

 

“Up, up,” Holdo’s voice came as Rey stood from Ben’s lap, pulling her towel around herself. “No PDA, guys,” she corrected them as she walked past them briskly, her long legs carrying her swiftly up the hill, barely sparing them a glance before judging their behavior.

 

“We were just leaving,” Rey said and she took Ben’s hand in hers, pulling him onto the path towards the cabins.

 

A few steps out, she wrapped her arm around his waist instead, Ben’s arm coming around her as well as he walked, head tipped down, sniffling occasionally, his other hand deep in his pocket. Rey stole glance after glance up at his face, judging how he was feeling, wondering how to help him.

 

“Let me get changed and I’ll meet you,” Rey offered as they approached the cabins, the path splitting where the Hummingbirds and Eagles parted ways.

 

Ben shook his head slightly.

 

“Yes,” she urged, “come on. Let me. I’m all wet but, I’ll go fast and I’ll be right back.” She motioned down to her drenched attire, her body starting to chill as she opened her towel to show him her drowned rat clothing and she gasped when he knocked her into his arms, the air pushed from her lungs as he dragged her against his chest in a bruising embrace, his lips searing hot as they descended on hers.

 

She stumbled as Ben scooped her into his arms further, her wet towel dropping behind her into the crunchy leaves covering the forest floor as he backed her behind the nearest cabin. His hands scorched her cooling skin beneath her wet t-shirt, pulling it free from her back with a suctioned slurp as his fingers moved beneath it.

 

“Wait, wait,” she whispered as she pulled away. She fought her shirt, dragging it aggressively over her head, her hair landing against her back with a wet plop as she threw her shirt into the leaves beside her, the black triangle bikini holding her breasts at bay alone separating her chest from his as Ben kissed her deeply again, pushing her against the wall at the exterior rear of the nearest cabin.

 

The sky darkened, crickets chirping as the sounds of campers coming and going, in and out of swinging cabin doors around them echoed through the woods, their mouths moving hungrily against and inside one another as Rey felt her chilled, hardened nipples scrape Ben’s chest through her damp swimsuit.

 

Ben groaned against her mouth, his fingers plunging inside her shorts and finding her swimsuit bottoms, pushing them aside and dipping into her wet heat, his tongue diving into her open mouth in time with his fingers in her pussy.

 

Rey gasped as his mouth moved lower, his free hand pulling her bikini top to the side, exposing her breast to the darkening Michigan night, licking her nipple with a moan and then sucking it inside his warm lips, his tongue bringing her body temperature beneath it back up to normal, her head hitting the wall behind her with a gentle thud as her eyes slipped closed and Ben slid his strong arm behind her back, bringing her closer to himself, her back arching towards him in abandon.

 

He was fucking her with his fingers.

His fingers were playing with her clit.

His mouth was on her tits, his tongue was sucking her nipple into his mouth while he whimpered.

 

She’d give him anything he wanted like this.

 

“Ben,” she heard herself whine softly, only vaguely aware of the distance to other campers, the possibility of someone hearing them, finding them a faint tickle in the back of her mind only getting her higher.

 

 _Let them see,_ she thought, _let them know._

 

She wrapped one arm around his neck and pulled his head close, letting her other hand drift over his pants button and zipper, running her fingertips the length of his hard cock concealed in his pants, wrapping her fist partly around him and squeezing, feeling him twitch and jerk in her hand even through the several layers between them.

 

Ben worked his fingers and mouth in tandem, in unison, moaning softly as she pulled at his cock, his hips thrusting up into her hand where he trapped her arm between their bodies.

 

“Where did they go?” Rose asked someone, her distant voice further than just around the corner, somewhere in another dimension Rey forget existed.

 

“I don’t know,” Hux answered. “Off somewhere making out, knowing those two,” he bit out.

 

Ben moved his mouth back to Rey’s, kissing her deeply, their hands each working as a unit to bring one another to completion, swallowing each other’s sounds, muffling one another’s noises as completely as possible.

 

The cabin wall heated behind her back, the friction reaching unbearability as Rey heard their voices move further away.

 

“Shhh,” Ben whispered into her lips. “This is just for us.”

 

Rey’s lips tore away again as she reached higher, ready to come for him, not ready to be done but, dying to run through the tape, meet the goal, let him end her, give him anything, anything, anything.

 

She tugged and squeezed her frustration into his pants, pulling him towards the place she needed him, wanting to wrap her emptiness around him and fill them both with what they craved, coming hard while she breathed his name into his throat when she came, _“Ben, Ben, Ben.”_

 

A moment more and she felt his hips stutter, his cock expanding and pulsing under her hand inside his pants while he pressed his lips to her shoulder, holding his breath and slowly removing his hands from inside her bikini bottoms.

 

Rey slid her heels to the ground, her calves crying for attention where she’d been on her toes and she pulled her bikini top back over her naked breast, tugging herself back into place again. Ben withdrew his face from her shoulder and hovered at her face, his nose millimeters from hers before kissing her again, his lips sliding over hers in a warm and loving mess, his breathing still harsh and needful.

 

“Go get changed,” he said softly, patting her butt affectionately. “I’ll wait for you.”

 

“Okay,” Rey smiled compliantly, her normal fire of protests extinguished in the dousing power of complete bliss, her eyes hazy with adoration.

 

She pulled herself from the wall and felt Ben smack her butt playfully again as she moved to pick up the discarded t-shirt from the dirty leaves, too filthy to wear again before washing but, definitely too much evidence to leave where she’d thrown it in her passionate haste.

 

“Hey,” Ben called, making her whip around once more. “Don’t forget this, sweetheart,” he said as he handed Rey her forgotten towel, his smug smile at her returned, masculine arrogance and sexual satisfaction sharpening his senses while they dulled Rey’s.

 

“Thanks,” she bit her lip, taking it in her hands before turning to kiss him once more, fast and hard on the lips.

 

“Hurry,” he prompted her as she moved towards the cabin.

 

“Don’t leave without me,” she called as she walked through the door, one last look over her shoulder.

 

“Nope,” he replied, heading the other direction. “Never.”


	8. July 2012 Ben

 

 

July 2012

 

 

 

_ Ben _

 

 

“I don’t know, man. I think I’m going home.”

 

Ben scrubbed his scalp roughly under the dripping water, willing the water pressure to last just a few minutes longer while he listened to Hux on the other side of the mildewed shower curtain.

 

“C’mon, man. Just stick around.”

 

Even Ben heard how unpersuasive his encouragement was.

Hux wanted to head home and Ben didn’t actually blame him. He definitely wouldn’t want to sit around camp with a whole slew of smelly middle school boys all summer, watching while some other guy hung all over his girl.

 

Not that Jyn was Hux’s girl anymore but, old habits die hard. Jyn’s relationship with Cassian felt like a betrayal to all of them on some level. She was supposed to be with Hux.

She had been the last few summers, even if she’d flirted shamelessly with both the guys, and this year she had made it official, transferring her coupleship status with Hux for Cassian.

_Poor bastard,_ Ben thought, rubbing his long, dark hair with a towel as he stepped out of the stall and moved towards the sink.

Hux’s pale skin glowed with a faint sunburn, his sad eyes fallen as he bent at the waist to tie his shoes.

 

 

“I can’t take it,” Hux said. “I just…I think I can but, then I look at him with his arm draped around her shoulders or her giggling up at him and I just…I can’t take it, man. I can’t. I can’t take it.”

 

“Alright, okay. I get it Hux. Okay, man.”

 

Ben pulled on camo shorts and a grey crew neck tee, slipping into flip-flops. It was his turn to drive the boat for a couple hours and even though he’d had enough sun today, Rey was coming with him while he dragged teenagers behind the craft around the lake.

It was enough to make him agree to anything, the promise of Rey beside him while he felt the sun heat his shoulders, the waves lapping against the boat when he turned hard to knock the kids off the tubes behind him. Her eyes always sparkled in the sunshine on the water like she was a mystical fairy from Middle Earth, an elvish princess, a sweet, little gift of a perfect girl and she was all his.

 

Their friends were unlikely to grab a seat alongside them on the boat, leaving only room for teenagers who wanted a turn on the tubes and skis and boards, so Rey would sit in the opposite captain’s chair and he’d have her all to himself all afternoon.

Perfect.

 

He pulled on a ball cap and tucked his long hair behind his ears, spraying sunscreen on the tips so they wouldn’t burn.

 

“Listen, I don’t blame you, to be honest,” Ben offered, sitting opposite Hux, his bunk depressing under his weight. “I wouldn’t want to sit here all summer and see someone hanging all over Rey. I’d fucking punch somebody’s fucking lights out.”

 

Hux looked over at Ben mournfully.

 

“I thought I could do it. I thought, _man up, Hux. Don’t let her beat you_ but, honestly, I was wrong. I just can’t watch this all summer.”

 

“Hux. Man. We’ll miss you but…I get it. I do.”

 

“I’m telling your mom and Maz before dinner.”

 

Ben nodded. There was no way Hux was being talked out of this and it sucked. The summer was only half-over and Hux’s departure would mean more work splitting up the kids among other counselors, not to mention the hole his presence would leave among their circle of friends.

 

He wondered what Jyn would make of that for about a split second before his blood began to heat and surge indignantly.

It was hard to hate Jyn. They’d been friends for so long. Jyn was fucking hilarious, always up for a gag, always a hoot to hang out with and she and Rey were inseparable all these years, best friends.

 

Cassian, though? It was easy to hate that motherfucker.

 

He’d chatted up every girl at camp when he arrived last summer, gauging what chicks were available and slinking through camp like a slime ball, charming the ladies with his dimples and his fucking Spanish accent and Ben could see him looking for an in.

 

Ben thought about Han, another cheater who tried to console him last year when he’d told Ben he was leaving Leia for good by educating him about monogamy and how it was unrealistic.

 

“Don’t blame mom because you can’t keep your dick in your pants,” he’d snarked at his father, seeing Han fume, working his jaw angrily to keep from acting out towards his son.

  

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just a kid,” his father had barked. “It’s not that simple.”

 

 

Ben wondered if someone had educated Cassian about monogamy like Han had tried to convince him last year, wondered if that’s why he was fine with trading out places with Hux without so much as a heads’ up.

 

Bros before ho’s, they’d all teased at age 13.

Sisters before misters, the girls had taunted back.

 

By age 18 though, Ben realized those were just words. Who was he kidding? If it were him and Rey, he’d pick her every time over Poe and Finn and Hux, even if they were his best friends.

 

There were friends and then there was love.

Han was a fucking idiot and he didn’t know what he was talking about.

He apparently didn’t have with Leia what Ben had with Rey.

Ben would never risk Rey for something fucking stupid.

Han was wrong.

 

 

“You want me to kick his ass?” Ben asked Hux with a small smile.

 

Hux shrugged and smiled back sadly, and it made Ben crack with compassion. He was ambivalent which meant he was really going home.

Maybe Ben could hate Jyn after all.

 

 

“I gotta get down to the boat. Do you want to come with?”

  
Ben held his breath, hoping against hope his friend would decline, hoping for time with Rey. What he really wanted was 15 minutes uninterrupted to make out with her in the boat house when they were done, her sea-sprayed skin damp under his hands and her flushed cheeks and wind-swept hair facing up at him in the darkened wood shack.

 

It wouldn’t be enough – it was never enough – but, he wanted to see how far she wanted them to go this summer and he was dying to fuck her but, first he had to feel it out. See how willing she seemed. It was hard to discuss when there were always either campers or other counselors around but, Ben had an idea of how it could work.

Before he enacted a plan to achieve that though, he needed 15 minutes to feel her skin, stick his tongue in her mouth, get her sweet, little titties into his palms and taste her sweet cum on his fingers.

 

He could get her off in 15 minutes.

He’d done it enough last summer and fucking waited all year to get his hands on her again. All social media had accomplished all year long was giving him good material to jack off to, photos of her running the pitch playing soccer for her school a few hours away, smiling at friends’ birthday parties, running around in a bikini on spring break in Florida.

 

They hadn’t had near enough time the last month to be together, not as far as Ben was concerned and that was about to change. He wanted to fuck Rey badly but, he also knew in his heart how fucked up his family had become – the divorce and Han’s philosophy of infidelity complicating his brain and messing with his home life the last year enough that Ben wanted to do this right.

 

He had to be sure.

  
He just needed 15 minutes alone with her to nail it down, be sure, get the green light and he would give himself the go-ahead to lock it down.

 

 

“Nah,” Hux said. “You go on. Thanks though. I don’t want to burn out there.”

 

Relief unfurled in his chest as Ben patted Hux on the shoulder and headed for the cabin’s screen door.

 

“See you at dinner, man. Let me know if you change your mind and want any asses kicked.”

 

 

Ben headed to the girls’ cabin to pick up his favorite Hummingbird lady counselor, a gallop in his step as he hurried to gather as much time with Rey as possible.

 

“Hey, Solo!” A voice called to him from through the trees as he walked, Cassian and Jyn crossing his path as Jyn approached her own cabin where she co-counseled with Rey.

 

Anger bubbled, and Ben squinted to squeeze it down, reaching up to pull his hat’s bill tighter onto his head to contain the fuel.

 

“Hey,” he murmured, animosity funneling itself in his words unchecked towards Cassian.

 

“What are you up to?” Jyn asked, bouncing on the step leading to the cabin while he eyed Cassian at the bottom of the stairs.

 

“Here for Rey.”

 

“Figured,” Jyn grinned. “What’s a matter? You look upset.”

 

“Yeah well, Hux is leaving.”

 

Ben thought about saying more.

_And it’s your fault._

_You’re a bitch._

 

Before he could think or say anything further, Jyn shot down the steps and raced past them both, tearing her hand from Cassian’s grasp when he reached for her, yanking her arm to her side as she ran through the woods towards Ben’s cabin.

 

Slowly, Ben turned back to Cassian, watching as his eyes tracked Jyn between the trees.

 

“They have history,” Cassian said, maybe to himself, maybe to Ben.

 

 

“They’re friends,” Ben corrected bitterly.

 

Rey popped her head out the door, perky and oblivious, and smiled at them both.

 

“Hey! I’ll be right out!”

 

In spite of his dark mood, Ben smirked and pulled his hands from his pockets in preparation instinctively, taking a step towards the path to distance himself from Cassian while he waited on Rey to head for the water.

 

“You guys heading out onto the boat?”

 

“Cassian, do me a favor,” Ben said, his head tilted back in an attempt to calm himself, focusing on a bird flying against a blue sky between the branches above. “Shut the fuck up. Would you?”

 

Cassian held up hands defenselessly, and his eyebrows raised in surprise, feigning innocence. “Hey, look man, I’m just being nice, that’s all.”

 

Ben cut his eyes at the man opposite him, careful not to take a single step in his direction.

 

Rey bounded down the steps and grinned at Cassian as she passed him, breathlessly tossing him a greeting before threading her hand through Ben’s as she reached his side, bringing a fresh wave of breeze past him before he overheated in disgust.

 

“Hey,” she breathed as her eyes met Ben’s. “You ready?”

 

 

Ben brought her knuckles to his lips, pressing them tightly while he tugged her into step beside him.

 

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak without ripping Cassian’s head off, taking advantage of his long legs to make time and put distance between Cassian and them.

 

“Everything alright? Ben?” Rey asked, looking up at him while they walked.

 

Ben planted their laced hands against his pecs and shot her a comforting smile.

 

“Yeah, it’s okay, baby. Just drama. Hyx and Jyn. And Cassian. You know. Same old bullshit.”

 

Rey groaned knowingly and shook her head.

 

“I’m so glad that’s not us.”

 

“Fuck. Tell me about it. That is not us.”


	9. July 2012 Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will you answer all questions? Nope.  
> Do you have a plan? Absolutely.  
> Is this a Fluff Queen trying to grow as a writer? Yep.  
> Does the muse work you or work FOR you? She's my bitch.  
> Shouldn't you answer all comments? I should and I wanna but, I don't want to tip my hand.  
> Do you love your readers? More than anything!  
> Will we get a Happily Ever After? Most assuredly.  
> Will we hate everyone but Hux? Not a chance.  
> Are you trying to tell a complex story elegantly, creatively, simply, soundly, romantically? Yep. I'm trying.  
> Do you hate everyone? Not even close.  
> Are we getting close to heartbreak? We are.  
> Is it going to go the way we think? Nope.  
> Should we trust you, Berry? I hope you do.  
> Really? PROMISE? You really promise? I do.

 

July 2012

 

 

_Rey_

 

 

_Mariah. Callie. Eliana. Maia. Riley. Ariel. Hannah._

She was probably doomed from the start, an odd number of 6th grade girls named as her campers but, that fact didn’t help anything now. The melodrama, the absolute emotional chaos she waded through each and every day as their counselor was unendingly exhausting.

 

Was she this tiring when she was 11?

Were she and her friends ever this completely draining?

 

She determines she should personally apologize to Maz and Leia and Holdo, the counselors still around Sweetwater leftover from her own era as a camper in case they had been this depleting.

Laying on her bottom bunk where she’s tossed her tired body after dinner, Rey opens her eyes wearily and blinks up at the particle board above her face holding another mattress aloft and she smiles at the paper held there with smiley face stickers at the corners.

 

_Hey, I’m at the pool lifeguarding. I miss you. Come find me if you want._

_Whatever you are wearing right now I am imagining taking it off you._

_Ben_

 

He’d left it folded on her pillow a few days ago and she’d secured it above her bed, a secret joy, a whispered reminder with every letter he’d written, every word he’d chosen she was his and he was hers and her stomach twisted on itself at the profound delight.

She exhaled through puffed cheeks while she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, slipping Converse on again and walking to Paige’s bunk.

 

“C’mon, sister. Evening huddles.”

Paige groaned loudly as she climbed from her own bed, falling into step beside Rey as she threaded her arm through her friend’s, both girls heading to exit their cabin and go collect their charges.

Any and all drama, whether parent, boy or friend-related would need to be addressed and dispensed of between Rey and Paige before they felt themselves released from the responsibilities of camp counseling for the night, satisfied their ducklings were tucked into their cabin by lights out.

 

“You think the boys work this hard with their campers?” Paige asked as they bounced down the steep hill towards the Sandpiper cabin beside Rey, their intertwined arms keeping them in step.

A troop of gangly-limbed teenaged boys squeaked their way across the blacktopped basketball court as they passed, shrieking and clamoring around one another as they jockeyed for the ball, Poe and Ben shirtless among them as they managed their own Hawk cabin boys. Arms flailed as sweat-covered torsos collided in a mad dash for the ball, wet manes of hair flying every direction as each boy present fought for dominance on the court, a wild cacophony of claims and taunts swirling around them in good-natured threats.

 

“Yeah, I’m gonna go with _no_ ,” Rey smirked thoughtfully, appreciating the sight of Ben shooting a two-point basket before the ball jumped off the rim, rebounding into his hands before launching again into a perfect arc through the basket and back down onto the court.

She watched his slick back, his thick muscles coated in sheen contract as he jumped, wide deltoids and triceps distended against his rounded, plump biceps, each strong leg fast and coordinated as he maneuvered above and around the entire group of guys.

 

How anyone could tear their eyes off him, Rey could not imagine.

He was like a war machine, like a symphony, a battering ram and a ballet.

 

The scene erupted in cries of surprise and defeat while Rey and Paige slipped by unnoticed, enjoying the opportunity to appreciate the masculine sport, unhurried.

 

“What’s going on with you and Poe?” Rey asked as they continued their descent, the basketball game behind them continuing.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Paige sighed. “We’re just makeout buddies at camp. Ya know. That’s kind of like our thing.”

“I mean, I know that’s been your thing for years, I’m just wondering how it’s going?”

“I like it,” Paige smiled wickedly at her friend.

“Yeah,” Rey rolled her eyes. “I know you like it. We all know you like it.” She shoved her friend gently in the ribs. “I mean, is that what you want? Just makeout buddies?”

Paige furrowed her brows slightly.

 

“If I didn’t I wouldn’t be making out with him.”

“I just mean, is that all you want out of it? Just…I don’t know…something physical?”

Paige slowed and removed her arm from Rey’s, looking at her.

“Just because I’m not in love with Poe doesn’t mean I should act like a nun, Rey.”

“Oh my God, that is not what I’m saying,” Rey hurried to explain, aware she was wounding her friend accidentally. “I just want to be sure you aren’t hurt is all, Paige. You know. Like, if you wanted more but, Poe didn’t…that kind of thing.”

 

They each continued their walk towards the camper’s cabin as Paige smiled slightly at Rey again.

“I love that you’re trying to protect me. But, we’re not all like you and Romeo. Just because I’m not looking for a soulmate doesn’t mean I’m not having fun.”

Rey smiled and slipped her arm back through Paige’s.

“Alright, okay. I’ll back off. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

It was Paige’s turn to elbow Rey gently. “Only way that boy is hurting me is if I ask him to.”

“Oh my God! Paige!”

 

Both friends laughed till their sides hurt and they’d nearly reached the Sandpipers.

“Who says we’re soulmates, anyway?” Something in Rey sought validation, for outside confirmation, for permission to believe such a thing.

Paige rolled her eyes hard as they reached the Sandpiper cabin door and she held it open for Rey to walk through.

“Please,” she moaned exaggeratedly. “I’ve never seen anyone more pussy-whooped than that boy.”

 

 

**********

 

 

Another hour and a half later, Rey and Paige left the Sandpiper cabin, hair freshly braided intricately and weary smiles accompanying their heavy limbs as they climbed the hill to their own beds.

 

“That Ariel,” Paige whined softly, “she is a fucking struggle bus.”

“The angst is real,” Rey agreed. “I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah, and I forgot bug spray,” Paige noted as she slapped her arms, killing mosquitos as she did.

“I can’t wait for bed.”

“Me too, I’m beat.”

 

The indigo night chirped with crickets and squirrels scurrying through the underbrush around them as they marched up the path to their cabin, pale yellow spheres of light illuminating the concrete every few feet under the street lamps that lined the walk.

 

“Hey,” a familiar voice called, shrouded in evening cover from beside the path.

Ben jogged up to meet them and Paige didn’t skip a step as she continued walking. “See you up there.”

“K, be there in a few,” Rey called as she slowed to a stop, Ben reaching her side after a minute.

He bent at the waist slightly and tugged her up into his arms, freshly showered and smelling like clean man, scrubbed, pure and refreshed. Being in his arms reminded Rey how grimy she felt, a day’s worth of lake water, sweat, bug spray and sunscreen caked on her skin.

 

“Hey,” she smiled up at him, her hands winding around his shoulders as he kissed her lips. “You’re all clean and wide awake.”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Oh you were, were you?”

“I missed you too fuckin' much. Come on. Follow me.”

He released her and took her hand in his, leading them into the mess hall, the large room vacant so long past dinner, the industrial overhead lights dimmed and the kitchen empty behind the accordian walls.

 

“Where are we going?” Rey hadn’t a clue what was going on.

“Somewhere we can be alone.”

 

 _Oh God,_ she thought. _This is happening._

_I_ _s this happening? I think this is happening._

 

In quick succession, she thought about her physical state, the last time she’d brushed her teeth, shaved her legs, put on deodorant, changed her panties.

The conflict between standing accused as ill-prepared and therefore unworthy warred with her growing anticipation for whatever Ben had planned but, she followed him anyway, climbing the narrow, carpeted stairs behind the green backroom door beside the kitchen entrance.

 

At the top of the stairs, Ben glanced over his shoulder down at Rey’s face, trepidation and sweetness gazing out at her from his chocolate eyes above her on the stairs and she smiled shyly at him as he rounded the corner at the landing.

Among the boxes labeled _Autumn_ and _Disco_ and _Extra X-Mas Lights_ lay a thick pallet of quilts, laid out beneath a single skeleton lightbulb at the ceiling, a cord hanging beside it. The dark Michigan lakeside night peered in through the lattice-covered window at the end of the attic.

Wordlessly, Ben pulled Rey towards the quilts and sat down on his knees, where she faced him, her hands trembling in his as she glanced around each direction, getting her bearings.

 

_Is this where they were going to do it?_

_Was this it?_

 

“We don’t have to do anything,” he said, looking at her face as she nervously looked around.

“Rey. Are you hearing me? We don’t have to do anything.”

“I do. I am. I’m just…thinking.”

“I just missed you and wanted to be with you. In private. We never get to be in private. Alone.”

 

Rey smiled at him.

_God, he’s so hot. Why does he have to be so hot?_

 

“I want to be with you, too. Does anybody…will anybody find us? Will we get caught up here? What happens if we get caught?”

“We’re not going to get caught. Nobody ever comes up here. And if they do, I’ll tell them I brought you up here and it’s all my fault. What’s my mom gonna do – fire me?”

“Yes!”

 

Ben snorted and sat back, crossing his legs in front of him, against a box labeled _HP Decor_.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Rey bit her lip and moved closer.

“I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

“We won’t.”

“I just want to be close to you.”

“So, come closer, baby.”

 

Rey was never any good at thinking clearly when Ben Solo talked to her with that tone in his voice. She could have been built solely of polar ice caps and his voice calling her baby and beckoning her closer would only have served to melt, flood and drown her faster.

She crawled obliging into his lap without hesitation, her legs spread around his torso, crossed behind his back so that their kisses took approximately 0.2 seconds to shoot from room temperature to boiling.

Ben’s hands crept under her t-shirt at the small of her back, his deep moan at her sun-warmed skin causing her to clench and purr back at him, pressing her breasts into his hard pecs firmly. Panting, she reached up and pulled her shirt off, tossing it aside before bending to capture his mouth again.

 

She’d never get her fill of kissing these lips of his.

_God, his mouth._

 

She pulled his shirt over the back of his head, his hands moving to help in one swift movement before catching her shoulders and maneuvering her onto her back, flat on the quilts beneath them.

 

“We don’t have to do anything,” he reminded her.

“Can you pull the cord and turn the light off?”

Ben jumped up so fast she almost laughed out loud, darkening the warm room to pitch blackness, the still night heat around them caging them as he fell slightly atop her where she reclined. Ben braced himself over her as he climbed between her open legs, his hard cock trapped in his pants against her shorts as he reached behind and unclasped her bra.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

One arm out of her bra, she left it curled around one shoulder as Ben’s mouth descended to her nipple, sucking and licking as she pulled his head close, arching her back into him as she moaned quietly, his damp, long hair tracing a line of feather-fine tickles onto her bare skin.

“Pants,” she breathed, antsy and desperate to get naked underneath him.

He pulled back and looked at her, their eyes barely adjusted enough in the deep dark to look at her.

 

“Are you sure?”

“Do you…do you have a condom?”

“Yeah, I mean. I do but, we don’t have to Rey. I mean it. We can just do whatever you want.”

“I want.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ben. Yes. I want to. Don’t you?”

“Holy fuck, yes. You know I do. I pulled all these blankets up here and I made sure Chewie’s off for the night and I know my mom drove into town and I showered and I…”

“Okay,” Rey laughed a little at him. “Well. Me, too.”

Ben leaned down and kissed her again, deeply, a kiss of promises and relief.

 

“Pants.”

This time, there was no hesitating. They each made quick work of pants, naked and kissing, limbs tied around one another on the soft, time-worn quilts in the warm attic where no one and nothing knew they existed but one another.

Rey’s breath caught as Ben leaned down and spread her legs with his hands, pulling her pussy apart with thumbs before licking into her until she gasped in shock and pleasure.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” she managed to eek out as he resumed his movements, licking and massaging her wet cunt with his mouth and nose until she climbed so high she thought she’d explode, a ticking time bomb of goodness set to go off at any second. She was too exposed laying naked and quivering in the camp mess hall attic to be able to completely enjoy the feeling of Ben’s tongue in her pussy though, too nervous and too scared to be caught and it all made an orgasm feel impossibly out of her reach.

 

“Come up here,” she pulled at his hair and ears gently as he emerged, wiping his mouth before leaning over her again, his weight securing her to the quilts beneath her comfortingly.

Ben trembled slightly as he kissed her, sharing his groan, his tongue, her taste in his mouth with Rey in a way that made her pussy quiver at the anticipation of what she knew she still lacked.

“Can you...can you get the…”

“Yeah,” he said before moving to reach for his jeans pocket. Rey heard him tear into a condom and roll it onto his length, planting himself between Rey’s thighs again while she reached around his neck and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth.

“Go slow,” she whispered between his lips.

“God, Rey,” he moaned as he lined up his cock, nudging her entrance and slipping the head inside her, a gasp leaving her lungs. “You’re everything, baby. Everything. Everything.”

 

She held her breath a long time, too long, feeling the burning prodding as he entered her, breaking ground and making way, staking claims, ruining her for anyone else, navigating uncharted territory until Rey exhaled a deep breath and felt herself bloom around him wider as she did so.

“Are you okay?” He didn’t stop moving as he asked, but his mouth inches from hers offered her kisses between his grunts, somehow shocking her at how filthy they sounded and how her cunt tightened and slicked with every noise he made.

“I’m good.” She ran her hands up and down his back, thinking about watching him play basketball, amazed she was the girl he wanted to be with.

 

_So lucky._

 

“Are you? Is this good?” she asked, genuinely curious. She couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t see his face, his eyes. “I haven’t showered since this morning. I smell like sunscreen and the lake and I…”

“Perfect. You smell fucking perfect. I don’t fucking care about any of that. Your body, your…you’re perfect, baby. Perfect.”

His hips stuttered and his body stiffened into a plank as he puffed hot breaths into Rey’s shoulder, her hair floating around his face as he sank onto her, pulling her against him as he curled beside her, tossing his hair over his eyes.

“Come here,” he said, a hand leaving her to remove his condom and leave it elsewhere before leaning over her and taking her breast in his mouth again, his fingers resuming pumping in and out of her pussy where his cock had been a moment earlier.

“It’s okay, Ben. I don’t have to…” she started before he cut her off.

“Oh, you’re gonna come. I’m gonna see to that.”

He kissed her deeply as one hand fucked inside her two-fingers deeply reaching for her g-spot, a thumb circling her clit while he licked at her tits one after another, sucking while her breathing quickened and her back arched in an attempt to climax.

“You’re mine, baby. My perfect girl. You’re mine, and I just proved it. Mine. Mine. Mine,” those words spoken, not whispered, an edge of possessive arrogance sending Rey into a flaming, spiraling firecracker bursting against the night sky in a hundred colors.

 

“God, you’re beautiful.”

Rey caught her breath and leaned forward to kiss him as he strummed a hand over her belly.

“Ben, I belong to you.”

“That’s fucking right you do and don’t you forget it.”


	10. August 2012 Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moodboard gifted by my sweet friend, @asongforjonsa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> age 18  
> next chapter within 2 days. Promise. A doozy.  
> Why are you all so good to me?  
> Stick with me. We're getting there. 
> 
> Love y'all endlessly,  
> Berry

 

 

August 2012

 

_Ben_

 

“I just wish it wasn’t so far away.”

 

He hated sounding so fucking needy, like Caleb when Ben made him sit out of kickball because he’d been nailing people in the face with the ball over and over. Except, Ben wasn’t a fucking seventh-grader, he was 18.

So, why did this subject make him revert to his most selfish self? It deeply annoyed him, the sound of his own griping making him wince and if he thought it was irritating, it was a wonder Rey still put up with this conversation at all.

 

“Me too,” she told him, leaning close with sympathetic eyes.

Both her legs were curled over his single, broad thigh as the bus bumped along all the way back from the movie theater, Ben’s arm a protective crescent against her cushioned seat beside her in the last seat of the bus where they sat deep in conversation.

 

This was supposed to be a fun night, their last at camp for the summer, all the campers already departed leaving only the counselors remaining.

They’d gone to town as a group, all 24 counselors plus Leia and Ackbar seated behind Chewie where he sat up front driving the camp bus, enjoying a night out on the town as tradition before the last late night bonfire of the season before they all left Sweetwood the following day.

 

Summer was over as was the evening’s outing, a reward for the last three months of camp counseling labor, the traditional Camp Sweetwood sendoff. The sun long set and the inky, chirping dark of the vacant camp awaited them as the bus lumbered towards the grounds.

 

Ben and Rey were oblivious to the others aboard the bus, deep into this conversation for 15 minutes already. Rey’s red floral sundress splayed over her knees under Ben’s hand, warmly bracing her legs in place on top of his own where she’d dropped them upon sitting beside him in the back seat, leaning in to rub the tip of her nose against his warmly until he leaned his forehead down against hers.

“It’s just too far, Rey.”

 

“I know.”

 

The distance from Michigan to London wasn’t the problem as much as the time change.

Five hours of life would separate them once Rey arrived in England later that month to prepare for college, and even though Ben had spent the better part of the summer ignoring the fact his girl was heading overseas for college, this was really it, now. No more time to avoid it, Rey was leaving the continent and it felt like something in his chest was stretched to the point of snapping.

It wasn’t like there was anything to argue.

 

She got a full ride, she was taking it. Period. Paragraph.

Her parents were cool and all but, no way were the Jacksons equipped to provide a four-year degree for Rey and she didn’t have any grandparent’s inheritance money to send her somewhere like Notre Dame the way Ben did, which was what he would have preferred if anyone had consulted him.

 

He’d laid in bed and stared up at the bottom of the bunk above his, at the rosy shade of lipstick Rey had used to leave a kiss print on the particle board when she’d snuck in and left it above his bed. It had been there to greet him, there as he jerked off when he caught rare snatches of time alone in the cabin, there to hover over him as he came, thinking about her mouth, thinking of solutions to keep Rey in the States once the euphoria of his orgasm faded and he remembered she was leaving him.

He sorted and argued with himself, negotiated and daydreamed, knowing he couldn’t solve this problem for himself yet, helpless to think of much else.

“I’ll be home at Christmas,” she offered as he fingered the spaghetti straps of her sundress against her freckled shoulder. “We'll see each other then.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And, hey. We can talk, we can text, I’ll write you all the time.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Ben,” she implored, chasing his eyes with her own, trying to change his mood. “It’s our last night.”

 

Nothing about that felt comforting to Ben, it only emphasized the hopelessness he felt.

 

“Don’t spend it being a grump,” she urged. “Please. Please? Please, come on. It’s sad enough as it is.”

 

“You’re right,” he said squeezing her knee beneath the red dress, tugging it to cover her knees, forcing his mouth into some semblance of a smile. “Sorry.”

 

“Guys set up bonfire since girls won the last cabin contest,” Ackbar announced as the bus jerked to a stop in front of the mess hall, the lights blinking on over his head as Chewie pulled the handle to open the accordion bus doors.

Rey leaned in and kissed Ben sweetly, blinking at him cheerily when she pulled back, removing her legs from on top of his, uncurling from their seat to stand, pulling his single hand behind her, at the small of her back where she held it in both of her own.

 

As they passed single-file down the aisle, Ben glimpsed Hux and Jyn lip-locked two rows up, hunched down, tightly wound into one another, oblivious to their friends’ departure.

“Huxy,” Ben sang as he smirked, using his free hand to flick his friend’s ear. “We’re here, man.” 

 

Jyn and Hux startled, wide-eyed and softly panting as Ben shook his head and continued following Rey down the bus path towards the open doors, other counselors stretching and heading off to the cabins ahead of them already.

 

“Are they for serious right now?” Rey asked over her shoulder.

 

“Baby, your guess is as good as mine, you know that,” he told her with an exaggerated shoulder shrug.

 

 

Cassian and Poe were heading towards the docks, presumably to prep the bonfire and Ben felt Rey pull the opposite direction.

“I wanna go get changed before we go down there,” Rey told him, reaching on tiptoes to kiss him before threading her arm through Jyn’s and heading down the hill. “Meet you there.”

 

“The fuck is up with that, man?” Ben asked Hux as he fell into step while they walked up the hill alone, the quiet, breezeless, late summer night air offering to hold secret confessions in confidence. “Why do you let her yank your chain like that all the time?”

 

“I don’t know,” he ran a hand through his lengthy, red hair. “I’m a sucker for her.”

 

“Yeah, but…”

 

“I know.”

 

“Hux, you know she’ll show up next year and pull this shit with you two dumbasses again. You know that. Right? Cause you let her?”

 

“Ben, gimme a break, man. Like you wouldn’t do whatever Rey wanted. Like you wouldn’t just lay there and take it. Like you wouldn’t take anything you could get from her. Please. Don’t gimme that. Rey’s got you wrapped around her little finger. Don't tell me you don't know what it's like.”

 

They walked side-by-side up the wooded path, mosquitos and fireflies dancing through the oak trees, branches cracking underfoot as they stomped, hands stuffed deeply into jeans pockets while they each pondered their respective relationships.

 

“Well anyway, I’m glad at least you stayed this summer,” Ben noted as they closed in on Poe and Cassian, Finn pulling up on the golf cart with extra seating as they approached the dock.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Ben naturally inserted himself between Hux and Cassian as the guys worked like a well-oiled machine to prep the fire, arrange adirondack chairs and build the flames, running interference instinctively between Jyn’s two paramours as was his natural occupation. They’d never come to blows but, occasionally one or the other would find a way to take offense and incite a stand-off, the tension ratcheting up so quickly, Ben pictured dueling Revolutionary forefathers and jousting knights while they scowled and huffed at one another.

 

If Helen of Troy’s face launched a thousand ships, Jyn Erso’s face launched a thousand glares.

 

You could hear the girls before you saw them emerge from the woods, singing Taylor Swift in unison at the top of their lungs as they careened down the slope into the clearing towards the dock, seven girls, linked at the arms, giggling and tumbling, an ungainly mass of tanned limbs and twittering laughter. Rey threw her arms around his neck as she landed in Ben’s orbit, dropping into his lap lazily as he fell into a chair towards the back of the circle.

 

He fitted his arms around her waist, burying his nose in her hair while she noisily held court, drinking a Cherry Coke from a can and leading a rousing song in a round which never completely met her expectations, shouting corrections and throwing accusations at all their laughing friends as the teasing carried on.

Slowly, she relaxed back into his lap further, looping an arm around his shoulders as she twisted her hips to tuck his shoulder under her armpit and she leaned in and kissed his temple before ducking to kiss Ben’s lips long enough Poe launched an empty can at his shoulder from the other side of the fire.

 

“Get a room,” Finn shouted.

 

“Alright, if you insist,” Ben teased, a devilish grin on his lips, as he rose to stand, lifting Rey in his arms, causing her to squeal and cling to his shoulders as the others shrieked and shouted at him to sit down again.

The laughter lasted hours, finally drifting into a sweet humming rustle of dreamy stargazing as the number of people around the fire dwindled with the flames, the thick dark of deep evening pulling a blanket of night over the lake tucked in at the dock they sat on until finally, the embers glowed low and the faintest chill swept in from the water towards the shore.

 

Rey shivered against Ben’s chest.

The backs of his legs would be imprinted with the design of the wood planks he sat on, numb with neglect where they’d lounged together, unwilling to separate longer than it took to get a drink, use the bathroom, hug someone goodbye before depositing themselves into one form in the chair together again. Rey seemed to be as reluctant to remove herself from Ben as he was and it made him greedy with her.

 

“Ya comin’?” Rose asked as she stood and peered down at Rey where she sat tangled in Ben’s lap, lulled into a glazed-over peace while they sat silently watching the last licks of fire slither around the glowing logs in the pit.

 

“In a bit,” Rey said, her head lolling against Ben’s shoulder behind her. He sat without comment, letting Rey determine when they left. He’d sit here on this dock underneath her roughly the next fifty years if she preferred.

 

“Night, guys,” Poe called as he wrapped an arm around each Tico sister, heading to the woods with them, leaving Ben alone with his girl at the water’s edge.

 

“Night,” Ben answered, tightening his arms around Rey.

 

The lights in his house nearby were still illuminated, his mother definitely still awake inside the living room, probably peeking through the curtains to see what the status of the bonfire was. He wondered if she could see this dock from here, and how well.

 

“Ready to head back to the cabins?”

 

“Mmm, not yet,” Rey murmured. “I’m not ready. I want more time. More time with you.”

 

“Who said we're done having time together?”

 

Rey craned her neck to look down at him with curiosity.

 

“There are a lot of empty cabins,” he offered.

 

Rey chuckled darkly and stood, pulling both his hands in hers as he followed her.

 

His hands were in her hair as she sucked him off, licking him in deeper, her small hands working him softly as she drove him wild, and he pocketed the image of her ponytail in his grasp as he gently maneuvered her lips around himself, groaning quietly while he squeezed his eyes shut to seal the memory.

 

Her breasts glowed in the moonlight that shined through the dirty window above the bare bunk he’d laid her on as he ate her wet pussy, licking her and memorizing her taste, her sounds, her motions, her voice as she whimpered his name and ran her fingernails against his scalp as he knelt and worshipped her body.

 

His back ripped with exertion as he bent over her, holding himself aloft as he fucked her adoringly, kissing his name from her lips while she caressed his arms around her and his ass as he pushed into her, the bunk bed creaking in time with his movements, the noise mirroring his efforts to leave a part of himself with her even when they parted the next day.

 

Her tears hit his chest as she bent around him afterward, her cheek sliding over his heart as she quietly complained to him she didn’t want to leave him, she’d miss him, she couldn’t imagine being away from him now and Ben determined with each word he’d pack it away, treasure her words but, he wouldn’t indulge in his own weakness.

 

She needed him to be strong. He could be sad later.

 

“We’ll see each other at Christmas,” he told her, refusing to let himself tell her how much he loved her, beg her to stay, plead to go with her. “And you’ll be back here before you know it and we’ll have a whole summer together again.”

 

Rey sniffled and blinked her tears onto his pecs, their hands laced together beside her cheek against his chest.

 

“And then next year, we’ll reevaluate.”

 

“Promise?”

 

_I love you. I need you. You’re it for me. I belong to you. Let’s get married. Don’t go to school. Don’t go to London. Stay here. You're mine. Don’t go._

 

“Promise.”


	11. June 2013 Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> next chapter tomorrow.

  


 

 

June 2013

 

_Rey_

 

 

If she had to spend three days enduring Lifeguard certification classes, at least going through them with Cassian ensured Rey would spend it laughing.

 

The endlessly dry lectures, 1980’s-era lifesaving technique videos and mock demonstrations were important but, Rey struggled to imagine anything more boring than sitting in the Michigan-area vocational school classroom prepping for camp Lifeguard duty while all their friends met and oriented a new summer’s worth of campers at Sweetwood.

She’d been home only 5 days before beginning her annual trek to camp and Leia’s letter had been at her parents’ house to greet her when she arrived, requesting she become lifeguard certified and spend this summer at the pool instead of being assigned campers as she was used to.

 

Now that she was 19, it seemed her number was up and it was her turn to play Pool Police.

She bought the required one-piece at Target, stuffed a couple pair of running shorts beside it into her luggage and headed for camp a day early, shrugging her shoulders helplessly at the Jacksons who smiled at her with tears of pride in their eyes as the stood waving her off as they did every time she left their home.

 

Somehow, she was still not used to belonging to them, even after 12 years, wonderful though they were, and it felt good to enjoy solitude once she was alone in her car on the way to camp.

 

Arriving earlier than other counselors, Rey realized even Ben hadn’t come home from Notre Dame yet, though it was a mere hour down the road from camp.  She ached to see him, breathe him in, get swung around in his arms, be kissed by him, even if she hadn’t glimpsed him in 10 months.

Had it been the longest year of her life or had it only felt that way once she was pulling up to the camp grounds, wholly unchanged but for the repainted mess hall and new porch swing out front beside the old payphone?

 

Ben’s ghost wandered the gravel paths, the wooded walkways, the diving board and lakeside dock, Ackbar’s golf cart and Chewie’s industrial kitchen, and when she crawled into her old bunk, she saw his note still stuck over her bed where she’d left it, a gift to her future self, secured with three stubbornly faithful smiley face stickers in the corners, last summer’s note fading.

 

 

_Hey, I’m at the pool lifeguarding. I miss you. Come find me if you want._

_Whatever you are wearing right now I am imagining taking it off you._

_Ben_

 

 

He could have taken anything off her he wanted last summer, or the summer before.

All last fall, in fact, when she’d anxiously awaited a two-week holiday sabbatical in Indiana while she went to school in London, dreaming far across the Atlantic of Christmastime, of Ben and of figuring a way to see him. He could drive down or she could drive up, her parents would be fine either way, she was sure, they knew what he meant to her and the Jacksons were not in the habit of denying their Rey anything.

 

Her mother had stroked her hair from her face while she laid on the couch, silent tears slipping over the bridge of her nose when she’d realized Ben’s trip to the Florida keys with his professor left no dates available for her to see him before leaving for England again.

 

“Oh, Rey” her mom crooned as Rey focused on the corded seams of contrast piping at the edge of the couch cushion, pale grey on even darker grey seats. “There are other fish in the sea. And you are so young.”

Rey had never felt young though, not for a single moment of her life and she had already crossed one sea and still felt wrecked with loss of missing Ben so she didn’t see how fishing around for anyone else was in any way a comfort.

 

She’d sniffled bravely and smiled, tucking hair behind her ears and she’d thanked her mother, deciding to keep her grief to herself while she sang carols, unwrapped gifts and threw snowballs. 

Only when she’d barricaded herself inside an airplane seat on January 3rd, winging her way above the Atlantic with earbuds safely cocooning her from the rest of the world, her forehead rested against the thick, oval plexiglass of the plane window did she allow herself to cry over Ben, looking down at all that blue water full of all the other fish she didn’t give a fuck about.

 

One night into camp, the rain fell so hard she’d abandoned her faithful old bunk, the edge of her mattress closest to the door, saturated from assailing raindrops whenever the screen door opened just like every summer, and she tucked her belongings across the cabin into the dresser she would share with Paige once she arrived. She pulled Ben’s note from over her old mattress, folding in the dried smiley face stickers and she tucked the precious note under her pillow on the new bed.

 

He was still with her.

She wasn’t alone.

 

“Ah, rayo de sol,” Cassian bubbled as they sped back to the camp in the rusted old Jeep they meandered around town inside, nursing Slushees from the 7-11 as they made their way across town, “this was much more fun with you beside me.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Rey groaned, “that was painful.”

 

“Well, you made it much more enjoyable, reina.”

 

Rey smiled and closed her eyes, the summer sun shining down unobstructed on her warming cheeks as Cassian drove, the cold paper cup balanced on her thigh grounding her in the June afternoon.

 

Her body was so used to the roads around camp, she felt their approach without even opening her eyes, the swaying Jeep turning into the campgrounds bringing a smile to her face before her eyes opened. Everyone was arriving.

He was here somewhere.

 

“Thanks, Cass!”

Rey bounded out and took off, tossing her half-drunk, icy drink into the trashcan nearest their parking spot before Cassian could exit the Jeep.

Class was dismissed and summer could finally, _finally_ begin.

 

She raced around the common areas, eyes scanning and chest heaving as she searched through faces and bodies looking for Ben, craning her neck and standing on tip toes to spot him.

 

“Rey! Rey!”

People tugged her arm and grabbed her hand as she passed, the check-in table overflowing with counselors and friends, general excitement and confusion reigning in the hall as Rey snuck past crowds and between huddles of people, stopping to appease people long enough to disentangle herself from them.

 

He was here somewhere.

But, _where?_

“Reyther!”

 

Her girlfriends spotted her before she could get free of the packed mess hall, using her ancient nickname to get her attention. _Heathers_ protocol dictated they each add a _“-ther”_ suffix to their names, a secret code used to establish their friendship bonds as well as a common dialect, constructed using movie quotes that had grown to include cult classics _Clueless_ and _Mean Girls_ over the years, too.

 

“Paither!”

 

“Rother!”

 

“Jynther!”

 

No matter that all the Heathers but one died in the movie. The tradition stuck.

 

“And just where you racing off to, missy?” Jyn asked, swinging an arm around her shoulders as Rey idled among her friends, antsy to restart her search for Ben once they’d hugged and greeted one another adequately.

 

“You seen Loverboy yet?” Paige asked.

 

Rey must have blushed because Rose interpreted.

 

“Ha! I knew it. I saw him head out back. Go get him, tiger,” Rose said, winking and biting her lip at her longtime friend.

 

Jyn and Paige shoved her towards the back door of the hall, teasing as she retreated.

 

She took a deep breath and mentally smoothed her appearance, loosening her facial muscles and pulling her mouth into a less-aggressive smile, relaxing her shoulders and working hard to give off breezy, summery, chilled-out vibes as she stepped onto the wooden deck.

 

With no one in sight, she climbed down the steps and looked out at the lake as she descended, the murky water gently lapping at the dirt shore below.

 

“Hey.”

 

Rey whipped around as she hit the bottom step, a shadow hidden beneath the deck piling shrouded from view as she located the familiar voice. An orange glow met her eyes, the end of a lit cigarette flaring as Ben took a drag before swallowing the smoke and blowing a thin stream as he tipped his head sideways before flinging the butt into the dirt and tossing his hair from his forehead as he took a step towards her.

 

“Ben,” she exhaled.

 

Two more strides and she was in his arms.

Where she could breathe.

Where she belonged.

 

Her feet left the ground as he scooped her close, his lips close against her ear when he whispered her name.

 

There were no words for her in this moment, just her soul groaning with relief.

 

“Hi,” she finally said as her feet touched the earth again.

 

“Hi.”

He smelled different, faintly like smoke and unfamiliar cologne.

 

“I missed you.”

 

“I missed you, too.”

 

“I’ve been here for three days already. Cassian and I had lifeguard school and I swear, you were right, it is the most boring thing ever and,” a tall blonde walking up cut Rey’s verbal tirade short.

 

“You ready?” she asked Ben, looking down at Rey before giving attention back to Ben.

 

“Uh, Rey,” Ben said, introducing the two strangers, “this is Christie Phasma. We’re classmates. She’s counseling this summer. Phas, this is Rey.”

 

“Oh. Hey.”

 

Rey smiled faintly as her cheeks burned while she gazed up at the statuesque, gorgeous young woman. Her white blonde braid cascaded over her shoulder, toned tummy peeking beneath a halter top above denim shorts and standing beside Ben she looked every inch his Amazonian equal versus Rey’s own mousy figure.

 

“Nice to meet you,” Rey replied, her best manners applied as she struggled with her fight-or-flight instinct.

 

“Cool. Yeah. You ready, dude? My shit’s still all in your car.”

 

Rey’s eyebrows arched as she regarded Christie Phasma, towering blonde giant woman with an albatross wingspan and tanned, slim legs as far as the eye could see as she jerked her head back over her shoulder towards the parking lot.

 

“Phas’s from California,” Ben explained, seeing Rey’s surprise.

 

“Cool.”

 

“See you at dinner?”

 

Somehow, her fingers were laced in Ben’s already and the thought of letting go was not appealing. She’d had her hands on him for approximately 60 seconds so far this entire year and it was dramatically insufficient. She felt turmoil roll over in her belly but, she nodded anyhow.

 

“Sure!” she answered, perhaps too brightly.

 

“Hey. Save me a seat,” Ben said softly, taking a step towards her.

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of her knuckles while looking into her eyes, heaps of melted chocolate boiling her insides when his gaze met hers like alway.

In a heartbeat he was climbing the steps with the blonde he’d brought from school, his voice carried down to Rey underneath the deck as she heard friends greet him when he entered the bustling mess hall above. 

 

When she crawled into bed that night, Ben’s kiss was still tangible on her lips as she closed her eyes in her new bunk beside Paige, her hair still drying from a dip in the pool at the end of her shift lifeguarding. She’d raced Cassian two lengths before staggering alone, loose-limbed and happy to Ben’s cabin, the darkening evening granting her bravery as she knocked and waited for Hux to answer and find Ben before throwing herself into his arms once he’d stepped outside.

She’d situated herself between his thighs as he sat perched on the picnic table in the dark, his hands laced at her lower back as his lips descended against hers for the first time in a year.

 

“God, I missed you. Kiss me for a week. Kiss me for a month,” she moaned brazenly when his mouth moved towards her throat. “Why did you have to go to Florida? Why? Why?” She meant it to be rhetorical, a desperate confession of longing for him but, Ben sighed and pulled away which was exactly what she hadn’t wanted.

 

“My professor took a bunch of us down there to Key West. I told you. He’s this big Hemingway fan. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Live like Hemingway, see his old stomping grounds, get face time with a tenured professor while we were at it.”

 

Pouting wasn’t her preferred method of communication, nor was it what she intended but, once she began she found it hard to stop and change tactics.

“I wanted face time with you.”

 

“Yeah, me too, baby but, I was going to have to stay with my dad, anyhow over Christmas break and no way was I going to stay in Detroit with my dad instead of head to Florida with Professor Snoke.”

 

Rey took half a step backward instinctively, rejection bubbling beneath her heart.

 

“I know but, I came all the way home from London and you weren’t here.”

 

“What did you want me to do, Rey? Sit here in fucking Michigan and wait on you to come back again?”

 

Something in his tone was foreign, more caustic and unfamiliar than all the European students Rey had met in the entire last school year combined.

 

Rey’s brows furrowed a touch and her lips pursed gently.

“You don’t have to curse at me about it.”

 

“I’m not cursing you,” Ben rolled his eyes slightly.

 

“Who are you even right now?” Rey demanded. “Where’s my Ben? Huh? What’s with this cool ‘college Ben’ with his edgy, blonde surfer chick friend and his too-cool-for-school cigarettes?”

 

Ben smirked and shook his head. He moved to stand and walked a step past Rey.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“I’m going to have a too-cool-for-school cigarette. You don’t want me here.”

 

“I do!” Rey insisted, pulling his arm. “Come here. Come back. Ben!”

 

Ben turned and faced her, pushing his hands into his pockets in a move so familiar to Rey she felt tears prick her eyes.

 

“Why have you spent the last three days with Cassian?” he asked, his eyes searching the stars as they poked through the navy velvet sky above.

 

“What? I…I had lifeguard school with him. Ben… _Ben_ ,” she tugged his hands into her own, pulling him towards her as she fought him to look at her.

 

"And why haven't I heard at all from you in the last month, huh, Rey? What, they don't have cell phones in Paris or something?"

 

The internet cafes had all been hard to locate with her heinously garbled French and her schoolmates had been less than sympathetic about making space for Rey to find ways to communicate with anyone in the U.S. while they traipsed across France for a month after school ended. 

 _You'll be home in a month. Mommy can wait. You're here with us so, be with us_ , they'd insisted when she continually sought long-distance access. They'd nearly left her behind when she'd been too distracted at the Lourve and nearly missed seeing the Mona Lisa. 

 

“I'm sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around his middle, tucking his own hands at her back. “I did the best I could. Please. Ben. Hold me, tell me you missed me. Please. I missed you so much.”

She was unmarching decades worth of feminist strides with her behavior but, she couldn’t be troubled with that when this was on the line. Dignity and causes be damned, she needed him to catch her meaning.

“Look at me,” she insisted.

 

“Put your lips on mine. Please. I feel like I’m gonna fall apart.”

She heard herself begging and if this was anyone else, anything else, any other moment in time she would have been disgusted with herself but, this was no time for restraint.

With Ben’s arms around her in another moment though, his lips smashing against hers as she mumbled appreciatively, comfort flooded her heart as he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, his hand cupping her jaw as she lost herself in how right he felt, how he still tasted like himself, how strong he was.

 

She ran her fingernails against his biceps, underneath his t-shirt sleeves, his skin healing her as she touched as much as possible, while Ben’s hands ran the length of her back beneath her drying hair, crawling beneath her shorts to gather her ass in his hands, his fingertips grazing the edge of her damp one-piece swimsuit beneath her shorts.

The could have stayed there forever, they had to stop immediately before Rey stripped wantonly and pulled his cock out unashamedly to ride him on the dried leaves beneath them in the woods outside the cabins but, Jyn’s and Hux’s voiced carried as they came closer, giving Rey enough time to open her eyes and look up at Ben from her favorite distance, mere centimeters before their arguing friends were within arm’s reach.

Ben’s hands stayed where he wanted them, possessively curled under Rey’s shorts over her swimsuit.

She spent the balance of the time standing there listening to Jyn and Hux fight, feeling his hands on her as she looked up at him.

 

“I’m your Ben,” he said for her, softly enough no one else could have heard his words. “I’m still your Ben.”

 

Rey laid her head on his shoulder where they stood.

This was the most intimacy she’d enjoyed in a year, the most comforting embrace of her life, the boy she loved no matter the distance here with her in the dark.

Leave it to these two idiots to disturb the peaceful moment with their bickering.

 

“You laughed when she spiked the ball!” Jyn cried. “Tell me you didn’t! You saw her spike it right down on top of my head and you laughed, Hux! You stupid motherfucker, you _laughed_ at me!”

 

“Well, I’m sorry but, it was funny, Jyn! God damn! Learn to laugh at yourself once in a while!”

 

“You told that blonde giant to spike it on me and you know it, don’t pretend like you didn’t want to see me lose!”

 

“Here we go,” Hux intoned, “it’s all always about Jyn. Everything is about Jyn. Can’t ever just be a nice, fun, little, competitive volleyball game among friends, it all has to _always_ be about poor, little Jyn and all the attention she thinks she deserves.”

 

“Not attention, you fucker, just a little decency. Something Miss California and the whole rest of your stupid fucking team didn’t seem to know about!”

 

“Alright well ya know what, Jyn? You just go on and think that. I’m going to go on and find my stupid fucking team and get some water. You have a good night.”

 

“Fine! Go find your stupid fucking team! And I hope you’ll all be very happy together! I’ll be over here handling a fucking head injury thanks to your overgrown glamazon teammate while you do that!”

 

“Fine!”

 

“Fine!”

 

“Rey!” Jyn called angrily as she spotted them standing near the cabins. “Are you coming?”

 

Rey sighed and moved away from Ben.

“I need to get changed anyway,” she explained, motioning to her drying clothes.

 

One hand remained in Ben’s as she lingered, pulling herself slowly from his embrace, watching him as she went.

 

“See you tomorrow.”

 

“See you tomorrow.”


	12. June 2013 Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright.  
> Here's the plan: Chapter 13, Rey's POV on this chapter TOMORROW.  
> Then, because NON-LINEAR timeline, let's take a break, shall we? We'll jump to 2015 and give ourselves a breather from the angst and maybe meander. Shall we? 
> 
> Berry loves you. 
> 
> Prepare your hearts.
> 
> Everyone, remember what emotional tyrants we were at 19 and give grace. 
> 
> Deep breaths.  
> Here we go.

 

 

June 2013

  
  
  
  


_Ben_

  
  
  


It was raining again.

Normally, Michigan summer rain didn’t last all day for days on end but, this summer apparently they were going to need to build a fucking ark because it would not stop fucking raining. The pool water was flush with the concrete deck surrounding it, the lake levels met the dock planks and submerged the ladders completely, and the paths between the cabins were under a foot of water.

 

Taking shelter beneath the trees accomplished nothing in terms of staying dry, the rain just jumped between branches looking for it’s next victim to shower and Ben hadn’t been able to smoke a cigarette in two days without needing a full change of clothes afterward.

Leia had a fit every time she saw him light up, lecturing him about lung cancer and telling him cautionary tales about people losing their tongues and voice boxes but, this was not the moment for Ben to try to kick a habit and fuck if he was in the mood to be lectured about it.

 

Snoke was right.

A little vice helped.

 

Theoretically.

  


Every camper was climbing the walls and every counselor was about to pull their hair out keeping them occupied.

They’d crafted, built forts, watched movies, had a talent show and broken up about a hundred dogfights between boys and catfights between girls.

Everyone at Sweetwood was annoyed, soggy and bored.

 

Except Ben.

 

He was curled around Rey in an adirondack chair he’d pulled from the top of a stack of chairs in the boat house for the last twenty minutes. The rain pounded the wooden shingles of the boat house while Rey straddled his lap, her shoulders bare under his hands where he’d pulled her tank top down to her elbows, trapping her hands at his waist and she moaned as she tilted her head back, letting him kiss her neck and feel her voice vibrate beneath his lips.

 

 _Ben_ and _yes_ and _please_ and _God_ left her lips as he dragged his fingers over the nylon of her one-piece swimsuit under her tank top, the material smoother than silk and thin as a sheet of glass, dry from lack of swimming, and her nipples stretched to meet his hands as he caressed her skin beneath the fabric.

She was completely at his mercy. Her arms were pinned to her sides, his hands scraping at her hard-tipped tits under her clothes as he licked her throat, murmuring how good she felt, his cock hard as steel beneath her and unforgiving of him as he ignored his desire to fuck her fast and hard while he took his time torturing her instead.

 

Served her right.

Running around in tight, little, navy shorts with the zipper up the back, her boatneck tank and black ballet flats giving him all sorts of new kinks. Apparently his girl had gone to Europe a teenager and come back a fashionista and he was still wondering how to get on board with it.

Much easier to pull her down onto his lap while she rhymically ground down on his hard cock and run his starved fingers over her breasts.

 

Without need of a lifeguard he had another hour at least till his campers needed him after their free time and Rey had little to do but work through a HoneyDo list from Leia on rain days.

 

“If I was lifeguarding with you, I could sneak you away and do this to you every day,” he taunted, spreading his fingers across her nipples again and again, back and forth over the fabric while he licked and sucked on her collarbones.

 

“Oh my God, I’d die, I think,” she moaned, boneless and struggling to keep a rhythm, bouncing around on his lap through their clothes.

 

“Take these off, baby,” he said, unbuttoning her shorts.

 

Rey scrambled up and dropped her shorts, moving back to climb into his lap with legs spread around him once her mouth connected with his again, licking his lips hungrily and tearing her tank top off, too, tossing her clothes aside with abandon.

He considered removing his own, or at least pulling out his cock but, really, it was only mid-afternoon and dim daylight beneath the rain. Anyone could find them. It added to the thrill but, he kept his pants on all the same.

  


_Easy access_ , he thought, sliding her swimsuit to the side and slipping his fingers into her wet heat, her mouth dropping open as he breached her. This was what he loved: seeing her eyes slip closed as he made her _feel_. See her give herself over to him, relinquish control, delight in his touch.

This was everything.

 

He was so fucking gone over her.

He loved her. He wanted to trap her, marry her, devour her, consume and posess her.

He’d been so tempted to fuck somebody else at school, especially after he’d rushed and his frat brothers had handed chicks to him, even argued with himself it would make him a better lay for Rey ultimately and she’d never have to know except to appreciate he’d improved. Each time, though, he’d remembered their nights in the mess hall attic and the empty cabin the night before she left last summer and he’d known nothing else, no one else would even approach that feeling.

He knew he’d remember it next time he got to fuck Rey and he wasn’t about to risk that. No guilt was going to mar his time with his girl. Not now, not ever.

  


“Fuck, baby, you’re so beautiful,” he said, pride coloring his words as he relished the consent that gave him freedom to fuck a finger up into her. He thanked God he’d never fucked anyone else all year long, even when he’d gotten high on LSD at Snoke’s and done the “Duval Crawl” in Key West, getting drunk at every pub that would serve them with his classmates who'd come down to Snoke's house in the keys in December.

Even then, he’d seen Rey’s face in his mind and refused, jerking off once he was back home to the dorm three times a day to make up for lost time on Snoke’s sailboat where he kept his hands and thoughts to himself while they went fishing.

  


Rey whined softly and her head lolled backward, hands perched on his shoulders as she bounced on his finger while he fucked her gently, kissing her deeply when her mouth settled against his. She was nearly naked on top of him, only that fucking one-piece, a single nylon strip of swimsuit fabric covering her at all, wild-haired and taking his finger-fucking while he watched her, letting him defile her pretty, wet cunt anyway he wanted.

His cock twitched jealously as he watched her take it, listened to her moan his name, watched her tongue flick outside her lips to lick his smirking mouth, but, he took the power opportunity to enjoy fucking her with his hands while he kept all his own clothes on.

 

He could fill her up later. This way, he didn’t have to mess with a condom and all the mess. He could just enjoy her body, her face, her voice.

His girl. His Rey. His. _Only_ his.

  


“Tell me you’re mine. Rey, tell me only I get to do this to you,” he said, overwhelmed with the need to hear it confirmed.  

 

“Yes. Ben, only you, baby.”

 

She leaned in and kissed him recklessly, sucking on his tongue while he pushed another finger up inside of her, just like he’d read in Cosmo, reaching for her g-spot while he circled her clit with his thumb, grinning to himself he’d done it right when she gasped, open-mouthed against his lips.

 

“Tell me you don’t let anyone else at school fuck you. Just me. Tell me.”

 

“Only you, Ben. Only you, baby.”

 

She bounced harder on his fingers, writhing and rubbing her tits on his chest, her hands running up his neck while she kissed him, panting and tugging his hair.

 

“Say you won’t fuck anyone else, Rey. Tell me, baby. Angel. My sweet girl. Tell me you won’t let anyone else fuck this pussy.”

 

“Only you. No one else. I swear. Ben. Nobody fucks me like you.”

 

She shook her head in emphasis, moaning and whimpering, her pussy clenching and dripping into his hand while she jerked herself on top of him viciously.

 

“And you won’t let anyone at school fuck you. Or anyone else here. Nobody else. Not even Cassian.”

  


Her eyes opened.

 

“What?” She stopped moving.

 

Ben blinked at her, as her gaze settled on his.

She panted while she caught her breath, lowering her pelvis to his as he slipped his fingers towards himself, out of her body.

 

“What did you say?”

 

Ben swallowed and searched her eyes.

 

“What - what?” he asked, sensing his misstep.

  


“Why would you even ask me that? Cassian, Ben? Really?”

 

He moved his hands to her ass. It felt wrong to be touching her cunt while she was saying Cassian’s name. While she was looking at him like that.

Confused. Dismayed.

 

“I just…” he was stuttering. “I just don’t want anyone else doing this to you. Even him.”

 

Rey furrowed her brows and brought her face closer. “No one else is _doing this_ to me. What does that even mean? I want you. I throw myself at _you_. No one but you. Ben. Come on. You’re being crazy right now.”

  


“I’m not being crazy. I see how he looks at you. I’m not a blind man, Rey, I know what’s going through his head and I can’t fucking stand it.”

 

“What’s going through his…Ben, look at me. I want you. I spend time with you. I’m here with you. I tear my hair out at school all year long dreaming about you. Not anyone else and least of all Cassian. Whatever you think is up, whatever Cassian thinks is up, it’s not reality. What I want is…” Ben cocked his head hard to the side and peered at her with narrowed eyes, cutting her off.

 

“Whatever he thinks is up? What does he think is up, Rey?”

 

She swallowed and looked down at her lap, her hands sliding down to his chest from his shoulders.

 

“What does Cassian think is up between you two, huh? Answer me. Please. Rey.”

 

She drew and deep breath and looked him in the eye again, her shoulders straightening.

  


“He. He. He kissed me. Yesterday. He was mad at Jyn for ditching him to chase Hux and we were just cleaning out the pool storage and all of a sudden he just kissed me. I swear, Ben - I swear - I pushed him away and told him to fucking forget it. I did. I swear. Ben!”

 

He was out from underneath her in a heartbeat. His hands curled into fists as he snorted and fumed like a bull, face reddening with the effort not to explode, pacing the small shack while Rey struggled to pull on her shorts and tank top.

 

“Listen to me. Listen to me. Please. Ben. Listen. Ben!” she blocked his way, holding her hands up pleading until he stilled and met her eyes.

 

“There is nothing going on between me and Cassian. I am not here for Cassian. He is my friend, he’s both our friend but, I’m yours - you’re my Ben - and I would never, ever do that to you.”

 

She took a step closer.

 

“Please. I want you to calm down. Okay? Please?”

 

“I’m going to fucking throttle that little prick.”

 

“I hear you. Please. Calm down. Okay? Can we just sit down please?”

 

Ben didn’t move, just worked his jaw hard, his face occasionally twitching in a betrayal of how hard he was working to keep control.

  


“You have no idea what that does to me, Rey,” he said, sinking into the chair and dropping his head into his hands, shaking his head slowly. Rey came close and pulled his head to her belly, threading her hands into his hair while she listened to him take deep breaths.

 

“I know. I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s not your fault.”

 

“No. Well, I mean it’s not but, I still get it. I see you run around camp with the blonde bombshell and I can’t see straight I get so jealous.”

 

She heard him grunt in an approximation of amusement while his head remained lowered, resting at her belly button as she caressed his shoulders.

 

“Whatever. You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s not like that with me and Phas. It’s not like I’m running around, shaking my ass in a lifeguard swimsuit in front of her all day.”

 

Her hands stilled.

 

“Uh, I’m not shaking my ass, I’m doing my job.”

 

Ben lifted his head and looked up at her. He needed a cigarette. He was suddenly exhausted and depleted and thirsty and sad. He’d intended this to be an orgasmic experience, a bonding moment, a sweet, little pick-me-up surprise for him and his girl on a rainy summer afternoon out near the lake and suddenly they couldn’t stop fighting about God knows what.

 

“I know you are. You can’t help how you look.”

 

“How I look?” Rey repeated, incredulous.

 

“Yeah. How you look. Don’t tell me you don’t know how good you look.”

 

“Ben,” she argued, hands on hips as she widened her stance. “I’ve looked roughly the same every summer for the last 8 years and I have yet to hear you complain.”

 

“I’m not complaining.” He stood up.

 

“Well then, what the fuck are you accusing me of?”

 

“I’m not accusing you! Jesus, Rey! I’m just saying you have no idea the affect you have on men!”

 

“And what, is that supposed to be a compliment? Let me tell you something, Ben Solo, I am not ashamed of my body or of how I _affect_ men. And for your information, the only person I am trying to affect is you, and you are not acting like a real man at all!”

 

“Yeah, baby? That’s not what you were saying when I was fingering your pussy five minutes ago.”

 

Rey glared at him, her body a solid wall of anger as she seethed, tears welling in her eyes as she clenched her own jaw at him, the standoff between them the first in many years tightening the ever-present braided cord between them over-cranked until it snapped and unfurled, something between them dropping loose and light onto the wooden planks of the boat house floor.

  


Rey shoved him hard in the chest with both hands and pushed past him, knocking her shoulder into him hard on the way. She stomped down the wooden dock, rain drizzling as she marched, darkening her red t-shirt a maroon as she made her way to the treeline. Ben watched her, working to keep his breathing even.

 

He was going to kill Cassian.

He was going to punch his smartass fucking face in and then pitch him into the lake and be rid of him.

 

This was what he had turned down rushing college freshmen sorority sisters and vacationing Key West beer-drunk girls for.

This was what he held out for.

 

Fidelity, monogamy, faithfulness - he thought back to his father’s concepts of the ideals he had held near and dear these last years and felt attacked, betrayed, foolish.

It was one thing to have a steady girlfriend and take care of her, be there for each other, belong to each other.

It was another to be a fucking doormat and let other guys move in on your girl because you’re being a pussy.

 

He wanted Rey to belong to him.

He wanted to belong to her.

What was happening though, felt far out of his control and not at all what he wanted.

  


He stomped back into the boat house and picked up the adirondack chair, hoisting it over his head, shoving the door open and stamping onto the dock in the rain, carrying the heavy chair overhead before throwing it as far as he could into the lake with a scream. He panted as the chair launched out far, splashing satisfyingly into the lake, sinking immediately, the raindrops pocking the waves that splashed at the dock from the pressure of the sinking chair.

He knew he'd thrown a fit like a toddler, and he silently thanked any god still listening no one had seen that. He felt alot better. 

 

Checking his watch, he realized he had 5 minutes to get to the Eagles cabin and gather his campers, all likely stir-crazed and chomping at the bit for fresh air, even if it was still raining. He slammed the boat house door, shaking the rain from his hair as he walked, studying the wet path as he walked down the hill.

 

Crunching gravel and splattering raindrops in mud puddles cleared his mind and he felt anger rinse off his skin as the rain’s baptism cleansed him.

 

By the time he reached their cabin, he told the boys to put on swim trunks and closed-toed shoes they could get muddy. Then, he and Finn led their campers through the woods and stomped, splashed and decimated every puddle they could jump in for a solid hour. They were mud-splashed, laughter-weary and exhausted by the time they left the boys to get showered and dressed for dinner, and Ben hadn’t thought about being angry for a while.

 

He headed to his cabin ready to change and start over.

 

Shit, he knew he was wrong.

 

He was raised by fucking Leia Organa, as liberal a feminist as they come, and he could quote Betty Friedan with the best of them. He was an English major after all, an intellectual, a forward-thinker. He had no idea why he was acting like a crazed, dick-brained Neanderthal, pissing on his turf and, he definitely knew Rey was not to blame for any of this.

Not for Cassian kissing her, not for how hot she looked in a swimsuit, not for how insane he was acting.

 

He took a detour to Rey’s cabin and snuck up the steps. With any luck, he could peek in and get her attention without anyone else noticing. All he wanted was to apologize. Fuck, she could walk around naked for all he cared, in fact, he would fucking vote for that, he just wanted her so badly to forgive him.

Nothing really mattered if he was out of her good graces.

 

He’d be jumping in exhausting mud puddles permanently without her sunshine and drenched to the bone as he was, all he wanted was her heat, a little bit of her light to warm him head to toe, just for a minute. He could get on his knees in the mud, he was already filthy, and she would shine down on him and he would fucking do his best not to fuck it up again.

 

Just a minute. Just a squeeze. Just a drop of her sunlight and his clouds would part.   
  


He carefully avoided the step that creaked and pushed the screen door gently, avoiding the squeal it made when you swung it open quickly and he peeked around the corner to the closest bunk, to Rey’s bed, the one she slept in every year without fail.

  


His smile faded.

 

A flash of Rey’s red floral sundress, a slip of tanned skin.

 

A grunt, a thrust, a panting voice, Spanish.

 

Two bodies, a familiar pose, a familiar angle, a familiar bed.

 

Rey’s bed. Rey’s dress. Cassian.

  


He stumbled to his cabin, _too late, too fucking dumb, too needy, too worthless,_ deserving of all this pain and more. Undeserving of Rey.

He stumbled to the shower and to dinner and to his cigarettes. He stumbled to the events that night and to lights out and to the poolside. He stumbled when Jyn shared his cigarette and pushed up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth, he stumbled when he screwed up his face and threw the cigarette down and walked away from her.

He stumbled to his suitcase. He stumbled to his car. He stumbled to the airport and to his seat and to the taxi. He stumbled to the house and to the boat docked behind it and he stumbled onto the water under sunny skies. He stumbled for a week until his skin peeled and his stomach wretched and he wished for rain and then he stumbled to Detroit and cursed summer and pain and his own fucking heart and his mouth and his girl.

 

He stumbled until stumbling felt normal and he forgot how to stand up straight anymore and he laid on his dad’s couch and wished for rain and dark skies until school.

  
  
  
  
  


 


	13. June 2013 Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good News: some of you will be relieved with this chapter.  
> Bad News: it is still Pain City, Population: Numerous
> 
> Good News: next chapter is 2015! Hope! Beauty! Love!  
> Bad News: I haven't written it yet.
> 
> Good News: this is Rock Bottom.  
> Bad News: it's still sort of brutal.
> 
> Good News: we are fucking EARNING a Happily Ever After!  
> Bad News: not yet. 
> 
> you people are my lifeblood and comments get you into heaven. I checked.  
> Berry LOVES you!  
> xo

 

  
  


 

 

June 2013

  
  
  
  


_Rey_

  
  


_“Who the fuck does he think he is saying I shake my ass I do not shake my ass I am fucking guarding lives I can’t help it if I have to do my fucking job in a fucking swimsuit it never stopped him from lifeguarding last summer when all the teenage girls stared at his big old boy titties while he sat there with his fucking shirt off all summer what the fuck is this the fucking 1950’s or something I don’t have to put up with this why am I putting up with this because you are in love with him Rey because you want him so badly you almost just jumped his bones in a rundown old boat house in the pouring rain when your boss thinks you’re helping chop vegetables for dinner with Chewie that’s why because you are in love with him and you are spending all this time having a fit instead of talking to him why aren’t you telling him this why I’ll tell you why because he’s a huge man baby who would have a fit that’s why.”_

  


Rey stomped through the woods beneath dripping oak boughs weighted with rain and slammed the door of her cabin open, tracking mud across the floor she’d clean later and threw herself onto her bed face-first.

 

“No fair,” she moaned, her pillow muffling her complaints as she repeated it over and over.

 

“What’s no fair?”

 

Paige was digging around under the bunk beside her and Rey had barely noticed.

 

“Ben.”

  


Paige rolled her eyes in emphatic agreement.

“Boys. Never fair. Duh.”

  


Rey shot up and hugged her pillow against her chest, tucking her legs into a pretzel beneath herself.

“Right? Why is that? They can take whatever they want and make us a weepy mess and we keep going back to them. Why? Why?”

 

Paige shrugged and raised her eyebrows.

“Dunno. But, I’ll tell ya something, it ain’t just boys,” Paige huffed as she flopped onto her own bed. “Girls can be the same way. Amaya? That girl I was seeing at school last semester? Same thing. She’d pick a fight and make me feel bad, and then make me feel stupid for feeling bad. Then two minutes later? Making out with her. It’s not boys that makes us crazy. It’s love.”

 

Rey flung herself backward on her bed, head falling at the foot of her mattress, still clutching her pillow to her chest and she uncurled her legs. She felt a slip of paper slide under her heel and using her toes, gripped the paper and dragged it underneath herself to meet her fingers.

Ben’s note.

The one she kept under her pillow.

 

Her heavy, wet bangs flew off her forehead slightly as she blew out an exasperated breath and held his note above her face, reading it again.

 

“He makes me crazy.”

 

“You love it.”

 

“I do not love it. I want it to be easy.”

 

“Love isn’t easy. And you do love him.”

 

Rey turned to face Paige, blinking as she considered Paige’s words.

 

“I do love him.”

 

“Well,” Paige said, jumping up from her bed and grabbing her lanyard from the end of her bunk to swing her nametag around her neck, “then, you’ll forgive him for…what did he do again?”

 

Rey shook her head.

“He’s just jealous.”

 

Paige nodded and chuckled.

“Yeah, that sounds like classic Crylo Ren.”

 

“Oh my God,” Rey giggled, his old nickname bringing her a moment of much-needed levity.

  


“Good old Crylo Ren and Mary Sue. True love forever,” Paige sighed, hands clutched at her chest as she looked up to the heavens and sighed dramatically, lashes fluttering quickly.

 

“Shut up,” Rey laughed, launching her pillow at Paige, catching it as she threw it back to her where she lay on her bed.

  


“Huxy, please!” Jyn’s voice directly outside the cabin window above their bunks filtered in and Rey and Paige immediately silenced themselves. “Please! Come back here! Stop! Wait! Hux, fucking…fucking stop! Stop walking! Just listen!”

 

She was pleading with him and both girls froze inside the cabin as they listened to Jyn chase him down around the cabin outside, two sets of footsteps audible as she followed him around the perimeter, landing at the screen door. Open windows and lack of AC meant the cabin was silent aside from the occasional dripping of faucets and the dying patter of fading raindrops.

 

“I didn’t mean it. Alright? I’m sorry. Hux, I’m sorry,” Jyn crooned, her tone softening as Paige and Rey silently looked at one another and strained to hear.   


No way were they interrupting this scene. Jyn and Hux had obviously stopped at the entrance of the only exit the cabin provided and it would be rude and awkward to make their surprising presence known now.

Hux murmured something Rey couldn’t make out but, the muffled sound implied they were close to one another, potentially touching. She held her breath and lifted a finger to her lips as Paige sank quietly onto the bed with her, both of them listening intently to the quarrel outside.

  


“I’m sorry I said that. I just get so mad and I know that’s not an excuse, I know. I know what you’re going to say.”

Jyn’s words moved from slow to quick in order to cut Hux off, and then descended into an apologetic whisper again.

 

“I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it,” she went on. “You know I think you’re amazing. And smart. And so fucking cute I want to nibble your lips like a chipmunk.” She giggled at him, presumably and Rey rolled her eyes at Paige as they listened to Jyn sweet-talk Hux. Paige gagged herself and Rey shoved her shoulder.

 

“You know I just want your attention. And I get so fucking jealous and then I lash out. But, I don’t mean it. Huxy, you know I don’t mean it. Right? You know I don’t mean it?”

  


They were definitely wrapped around each other. Rey could hear their voices moving in and out of range, indicating movement.

Paige glanced at her phone in her pocket and checked the time, huffing slightly at Rey to convey annoyance at the entrapment.

  


“You have to stop it, Jyn. You have to grow up and knock it the hell off.”

 

Rey raised her eyebrows at Paige as she heard Hux lay down the law. Paige mirrored her expression and nodded.

 

“Okay. Okay,” her voice came between kissing noises.

 

“I’ll knock it off if you’ll knock it off.”

 

 _Shit,_ Rey thought, realizing Jyn was still Jyn and they were about to have a standoff about this.

  


“I am not doing anything, Jyn. I care about you, I’ve cared about you for as long as I can remember. You’re the one constantly trying to torture me.”

 

“Not doing anything? So, I suppose I just imagined it when I saw you smack the Amazon’s ass earlier at the softball game, huh? What was that, Hux, some sort of delusion I was under?”

 

Their voices were raising and Paige dropped her head into her hand.

Rey studied the bunk above her head.

 

“She was my teammate, I was being sportsmanlike. It wasn’t sexual. Unlike you and Cassian, who seem to be engaged in a constant game of grab-ass every time I turn around!”

 

Rey face-planted onto Paige’s shoulder, listening to this argument devolve.

 

“Can I sneak past them?” Paige hissed.

“No! They’ll know we heard it all now!” Rey whispered in return.

  


“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have a chance to hang out with Cassian if you paid me a little more attention, ever think of that? Huh? Wait… wait, Hux!”

 

Jyn desperately called for Hux and her voice got slightly quieter, moving off the steps as he presumably responded in frustration to her thin argument.

 

“I’ll stop. I’ll stop. Okay? Okay? Hux, okay? I’ll stop.”

 

_Silence._

"Hux," Jyn moaned, "I'll stop. With Cassian. I won't do that anymore. I promise. Okay? I'll stop."

 

The court was deciding Jyn’s fate, it seemed, the shuffling of feet on gravel and stairs making Rey and Paige hold their breath awaiting a verdict on Jyn’s offer.

Rey met Paige’s eyes as they strained to hear.

 

“You won’t. You won’t,” Hux’s voice strengthen as he seemed to decide something. Rey felt her heart deflate in spite of herself, disappointed it didn’t seem her BFF was going to be forgiven as easily this time.

 

“Hux…”

 

“You’ll just lead me on and drive me crazy and the next time I do anything you don’t like you’ll snuggle up to Cassian and torture me again. I can’t do it anymore Jyn. No matter how much I want to, I can’t do it anymore.”

  


“Huxy,” Jyn began again.

  


“No. Let go. Get off of me, Jyn, I’m serious. Let go. I’m done.”

 

“Hux!”

 

“Fucking stop Jyn, I’m serious! I can’t do this anymore. You get your act together and come find me when you know how to be a good girlfriend. Hell, when you know how to be a decent human being but, until then you fucking stay the hell away from me.”

 

Rey’s eyes widened to maximum shock, Paige’s mouth dropped into a gaping gasp.

Hux stomped off in the puddles, splashing as he left and Jyn shouted after him.

 

“Hux! Don’t! Don’t you do this to me, Hux, I swear to God! Hux! Hux! Well…well…well, fuck you! Fuck you! I hate you! I hate you!”

  


The screen door flew open and Jyn tore inside, throwing herself onto the nearest surface, her hair flying around her face as she collapsed onto the bed nearest the door. Her wet t-shirt stuck to her skin above her swimsuit as she flung herself down, filthy sandals falling onto the floor beside her as she wept.

 

Rey and Paige closed in, looking at one another cautiously, unsure whether to intervene.

Jyn sobbed noisily as they sat beside her, their shorts slowly absorbing water from the drenched mattress, wet with rainwater accumulation beneath Jyn’s wailing form.

 

“I am a decent person! I am! I try to be, I am!” Jyn cried and moaned as she flailed, hair catching on her wet face as she looked up at Paige and Rey with brightly-lit eyes, iridescent with tears and hurt.

 

“Oh, Jyn,” Rey said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“Yeah, that was brutal,” Paige said, patting her back.

 

They stroked her hair and arm while she cried another moment, waiting as her tears quieted into sniffles.

 

 

“He’s a fucking asshole,” Jyn spouted, anger tinting her tone. “Thinks he’s too good for me.”

 

Paige shot Rey a look but, they both held three tongues, aware Girl Code dictated this was not the time for taking sides against their crying cabinmate and longtime bestie.

  


“This bed is sopping wet,” Paige murmured, feeling the bottom of her shorts. “I gotta get to the mess hall. I’m leading Sign Language in ten. I gotta get dry shorts on. Again.”

 

She stood to move and Rey inched closer to Jyn as the bed shifted, her friend still wiping tears and sniffing herself to recovery.

 

“I don’t know why I’m like this,” Jyn whispered, looking up at Rey, her pitiful, tear-stained face sticky with loose hair draped across it, bright eyes shining above a perfectly pert, upturned nose, bright red from upset and puffy lips overworked with crying. “I hate fighting with him. I just…he makes me so crazy. You know? I feel like I’m going crazy.”

 

“You’re not crazy,” Rey comforted her, remembering her own internal rant as she stomped through the rain a half hour earlier. “I know exactly what you mean. You’re not crazy this is just all part of it.”  


“Part of what?”

 

Rey shook her head, unsure herself.

 

“Growing up. Being in love. Adulting. Figuring shit out.”

 

“I’m no good at it.”

 

Rey smiled at her. “I’m no better,” she said, remembering shoving Ben in the chest and body-checking him on the way out of the boat house.

  


“Let’s go back to sharing popsicles and boys having cooties.”

 

“And pranks. Remember pranks?”

 

“Oh my God, remember that year we snuck into the boy’s cabin and left open cans of tuna under the dressers and they were all like _‘our cabin smells like dead fish’_ and they lost the cabin contest because it stunk to high heaven?”

 

Both girls laughed heartily remembering the prank, a legend around camp in recent years as Paige walked past them and blew them a kiss on her way out the door.

 

“Oh my God, yes,” Rey laughed, the stress of the day rolling off her in sheets. “And then Ackbar found out and we had to scrub their bathroom for a month!”

 

“Worth it!”

“Totally worth it!”

 

They were both smiling and Rey sighed happily. She couldn’t remember what she’d even been upset about earlier. Sometimes you just needed to laugh with a friend you trusted.

  


“Ah, the good old days,” Jyn sighed as she flopped to her back.

 

Rey smiled at her. Jyn sat up and pulled her wet t-shirt off, throwing it on the floor, laying on the striped, bare mattress, only her bikini covering her, her arms propped behind her head, looking more like herself. Her belly button ring twinkled and she crossed her ankles as she smiled at the underside of the bunk above them, and Rey decided she was safe to leave.

 

Maybe she could still catch Ben at the boat house.

If not, she could maybe see him after dinner and maybe pick up where they left off earlier. He wasn’t wrong to be jealous exactly - she knew well enough what it felt like to be a jealous wreck, irrational and crazed. She was jealous as hell of California Barbie but, dammit, Ben was _hers_ and fuck it all if she was going to lay down without a fight.

 

Maybe she could get the key to the mess hall and sneak them into the attic after dinner, maybe set up their secret getaway beforehand for a midnight rendezvous.

 

God, why did he have to be so handsome?

Why did he have to sound so good, why did he have to smell so yummy and touch her just right and why did she like it so much when he was possessive and jealous?

Why was that so infuriating and also so goddamn hot?

 

He needed to have his ass kicked.

And potentially also his beautiful, big dick sucked.

That was a fantasy she could easily get carried away with. Probably he’d also make love to her after that. And probably he’d apologize and this could all get sorted before her head hit the pillow tonight.

She just had to go find him, first.

  


A knock on the screen door jolted her and she jumped up to see who it was.

_Ben?_

 

“Oh. Hey,” she said, seeing Cassian standing there.

 

She hadn’t really interacted with him since their awkward, unwanted kiss the day before. She had been very aware he was interested in more than friendship but, equally aware he was constantly flirting with everything that wore a skirt so, he was just as interested in a response from Rey as he would have been from Jyn or Rose or Paige or Amazon Barbie for that matter.

She’d shoved him off after he tried sticking his tongue in her mouth, the pool storage room reeking of chlorine around them and his aggressive kissing making her nauseated.

This morning at breakfast he’d handed her the cup of OJ he’d poured himself and shrugged innocently at her.

 

“Okay, rayo de sol?” Casein had asked, handing her the orange juice sheepishly. “Forgive me?”

 

“Sure,” she’d said as she took the juice. “Thanks.”

 

Looking at him now, watching as he peered inside past Rey, clearly looking to locate another target, Rey felt queasy again.

 

“Is Jyn here?” he asked.

“Yeah, hang on,” she said, dropping her grip on the screen door as it fell closed, leaving Cassian on the steps.

  


“Cass wants you,” Rey said, grabbing the closest clothing from the bathroom door hook and tossed it to Jyn.

 

Jyn pulled Rey’s strappy, red floral sundress down over her bikini as she sat up on the wet mattress, her hair flying haywire under the static and Rey slipped her feet into Jyn’s sandals to leave.

 

“I’m outta here,” she said, walking through the screen door and past Cassian, back into the dripping rain.

“She’s all yours,” Rey told him as she stepped onto the path.

 

With a little luck, she’d get to the boat house before Ben left.

  


_Do I need to apologize?_

_I mean, what do I have to apologize for?_

_No._

_I need to be firm._

_I don’t accept responsibility for what isn’t mine._

_I’m not guilty, I don’t need to act guilty._

_I do need to give him a chance to talk, though._

_He’s had a chance to cool off._

_If I know my Ben, he’s probably thinking straight again, now that his lid isn’t flipped anymore._

_Ben._

_I miss Ben._

_How can I miss him in the space of an hour?_

_I guess that’s what happens when you don’t see one another for a whole year._

_Good lord, I never want that happening again._

_I don’t really want to be apart from him at all anymore._

_I want him._

_He’s mine and I want him._

_I need him._

_I wonder if Ben would come to England._

_I could show him Piccadilly._

_And the Tower of London._

_And Paris._

_We could go to Paris._

_I wonder if Ben would go to Paris with me._

_Maybe he’ll transfer and come to school with me._

_I don’t think I can take a whole year apart anymore._

_Maybe I won’t have to._

  


There was plenty of time to stay in her own head while she pulled her knees up against her chest in the boat house alone until dark, rocking slowly as she listened to the rain stop and the birds come back out to chirp. There was plenty of time to wander the grounds as night fell and campers scampered around, plenty of time to daydream as counselors corralled their kids, plenty of time to help Chewie in the kitchen after dinner, swiping the spare key to the mess hall and jogging upstairs to see her stash of old blankets still airtight in a forgotten cooler behind a box labeled _Christmas Decor_.

 

There was plenty of time to amble dreamily up the hill again, lights out and last checks bringing everyone back to their own cabins while Rey strolled aimlessly, intent on finding Ben and planning a sneak-out with him for later on. There was time to plan and wonder and hope until her feet brought her drifting to the pool to lock up for the night, make sure it was empty and she saw Ben smoking, leaned up against the red-bricked pool building.

 

There had been time. There had been hours.

It had stretched lazily before her in branching possibilities, each a hopeful promise of a life tangled with Ben’s until time stopped and her feet stilled and she froze solid and it all just hung there.

Suspended.

 

Ben sucked in a drag and Jyn took his cigarette, her red lips closing around the white stick he’d just had in his mouth.

His half-closed eyes, heavy-lidded and cavernous glazed as Jyn exhaled smoke before rising on her toes and leaning close to kiss him. She put a hand to the center of Ben's wide chest, just over the heart Rey knew beat for her - not Jyn - and she pressed her lips over his. Her calves beneath her shorts flexed, her fingers splayed wide against his white t-shirt and she handed him back the cigarette.

 

She kissed him.

Rey saw Jyn kiss him.

 

He looked drugged, he looked oblivious.

He did nothing.

He didn’t push her, he didn’t shove her as she’d shoved Cassian, he just stood, his shoulders sloping, his gaze on the pool water.

 

He didn’t see Rey.

 

He tossed the cigarette down into the dirt and Rey turned and time ticked on and she ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to Anisky who teaches me how to be all the time. <3


	14. June 2015 Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Berry, did you and your cabinmates ever pull that tuna fish prank from Chapter 13 at camp? Yep. 
> 
> Berry, are you enjoying referring to Ben and Rey as "Crylo Ren" and "Mary Sue" because meta? Yep. 
> 
> Berry, did you listen to [THIS](https://youtu.be/DtZKwp6cjd4) song endlessly as a lovesick teen and think of it constantly while writing this fic? Stardust? Yep. 
> 
> Berry, should we listen? Do you know it by heart? Is Nat King Cole a god? Should we really listen to the glorious words and orchestrations? Is this the Song Of Your Life and eternal inspiration? YEP YEP YEP YEP YEP.
> 
>  
> 
> Berry, have we suffered enough? And are we now about to be rewarded? YEP and YEP.
> 
>  
> 
> Berry loves you!  
> xo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time Restarts.

 

 

 

June 2015

 

 

_Rey_

 

“What the heck, ladies?”

 

She was smiling brightly but, her eyes were wide with wonder as she stepped into the Lark cabin, taking in a heaping pile of 8th grade girls laughing hysterically. It took everyone a moment to recover enough to address her and she stood, head slowly shaking as she observed them, taken with something funny she was not privileged to.

 

 _At least they’re laughing and not crying for once,_ she mused, watching them wipe tears from their faces and hold their bellies in doubled-over laughter.

 

“What’s so funny?” she chuckled as she spoke in spite of herself, almost nervous to find out.

 

“It’s this thing Jasmine taught us,” Hayden wheezed.

 

“You like, add the words _‘under the sheets’_ to any song title. So fucking funny!” Serena screamed, rolling on her bunk laughing again.

 

“Language,” Rey reminded, smiling as she came to understand the inside joke among the girls.

 

“Like, _Hit me Baby One More Time_ …under the sheets,” Julia chortled, commencing a new round of giggles.

 

“ _You’re Beautiful_ …under the sheets,” Hayden cried.

 

“ _What a Man_ …under the sheets!” Arianna screamed, causing them all the fall into a pile of snorts and shrieks again.

 

Rey shook her head in amusement and headed for the door of the cabin. They were being loud but, as long as she didn’t need to comfort, correct or corral anyone, she was happy to leave them in a state of giddiness and give her ears a break elsewhere.

 

“K, I’ll leave you to it then. You musical geniuses.”

 

Another round of laughter broke as she heard the door slam behind her, making her way down the steps as she smiled to herself. They were really a great group of girls she had this year, all returning campers except for Hayden and even she had fit in well. Rey was having the best summer with them, really enjoying their age. Eighth grade seemed to be a sweet spot for her.

She could hang out with the girls without feeling like their mother hen all the time, and they still went to bed when she told them to.

Or, at least, they were quiet enough after last checks and lights out she hadn’t been needed to be utilized by Holdo to come rebuke them after hours.

 

Walking under the dappled sunlight through the oak branches, she remembered a younger Amilyn Holdo, her own counselor at that age. Her hair a pale purple, dyed to complete her punk rock aesthetic self, she'd been known to let Rey, Jyn, Paige and Rose off with only a brief reprimand when she was called to their cabin after hours.

 

They’d lain shaking in their bunks, awaiting judgement for their noise pollution levels as they’d screamed with laughter many times, but by dawn everything was forgotten, every time.

 

Ackbar pulling to a stop beside her on his golf cart shook Rey from her dreamy reverie.

 

“You heading up the hill?” Ackbar asked, never one for small talk.

 

“Hey. Yeah,” she smiled.

 

“Mind taking these up to Leia? She’s at her place.”

 

He held up a stack of papers, clipped at the top and two thick manila envelopes underneath, a pile of mail stacked neatly at the top of the pile.

 

“Sure,” Rey said. _She had time. Why not?_

 

“Thanks.”

 

She tucked the bundle underneath her arm and stalked back up the hill, returning to her reminscing.

It was hard to believe this would be their last summer at Sweetwood.

 

Leia had been clear with all the counselors before camp began why she was selling and what sense it made but, everyone at the meeting was heartbroken all the same.

It was unclear what use the buyers had for the site and whether it would be developed into something else. There was talk of the acerage being rezoned into residential space which made sense. Lakeside property would be valuable if Sweetwood was chopped up and sold off in parcels, but Rey couldn’t imagine anything else happening here besides summer camp.

It sort of broke her heart and she was so thankful they all had at least this one, last summer to enjoy it.

 

Everywhere she walked on the grounds, memories called to her.

Hux had bombed her in the face with a water balloon during an epic battle over there behind that cabin. Finn had broken his right ankle jumping out of that oak tree. She’d pushed Jyn off the deck in anger that year, right over there. Ben had kissed her under that canopy once.

 

This camp was crammed full of ghosts.

 

Sighing deeply, she continued walking until she crested the hill, the docks and Leia’s A-frame chalet nestled at the lakeside below. The water sparkled cheerfully and Rey took a deep breath and appreciated the view.

It really was beautiful.

 

“Leia?”

 

She called her boss’ name after knocking twice on the chalet’s door and opened the screen door of the house to peer inside. She called once more before taking a tentative, single step inside the house.

 

“Leia? You home?”

 

The door was never locked. Twisting the handle, she stepped inside the small house, unchanged since the last time she’d been inside a year ago. Leia lived on the grounds year-round with Maz, who had become an even more constant companion after Leia and Han’s divorce, the two women rarely apart and more than once Rey had heard the campers speculating about the nature of their relationship.

Hell, more than once she’d heard the other counselors theorizing about Leia's and Maz’s relationship.

 

“Leia?” she called once more, walking inside the living room.

 

She dropped the pile of papers and mail on the coffee table in front of the worn leather sofa.

The ticking Grandfather clock in the corner keeping time in the silent house as she looked around at the trinkets and tchotchkes that lined Leia’s windowsills and book cases, miniature birds and memorabilia from a lifetime of groundskeeping at a popular summer camp, all the same.

Stepping closer, she examined the annual camp photos, framed along the staircase in mismatched frames. Smiling faces of uniformed, t-shirt-clad campers with arms around one another’s shoulders grinning back at her, frozen in time on Leia’s wall.

 

She leaned in to look at her face in one, carefree at probably 12-years-old, her hair pulled into three buns at the back of her head, scabbed knees and braces. Her arms were thrown around Paige and Jyn on either side of her.

 

_So easy. Everything had been so easy._

 

Her eyes scanned the photo instinctively, and she saw the familiar faces of men she knew, only boys in the photo before her, barely taller than the girls beside them, arms crossed over their elevated chests, chins tucked in to convey their group status as “First Order” troops, self-named. She shook her head as she studied them, grinning at their little boy antics.

 

_Ben._

 

Her heart twisted hard as her gaze caressed his young face, the one she used to roll her eyes at, the mouth she used to want to smack and then eventually kiss, the ears that peeked through his shorter hair.

 

She turned away before she could feel anything too big.

 

 _Ben’s room._  

 

It was right there.

A couple steps and she could be inside Ben’s room.

 

Without considering, without thinking she took a step towards his slightly-cracked door. The light spilling out from the sliver of space beckoned her like a string tied to her spine, pulling her taut as she felt herself dragged to his space.

Everything inside was permeated with his essence and something broke open in her lungs as she breeched the room, a hand on the round, crystal doorknob as she pushed the door open.

 

_Ben._

 

Why was she about to cry? It was only a room.

 

She’d had dreams like this.

Dreams where she was in his room, laying on his bed, looking out his window but, he wasn’t there. In real life it felt no less surreal.

A hushed reverence settled over her as her eyes fell on Ben’s belongings around her. His familiar scent, a cologne she had smelled on his skin and camp fire smoke wafted around her, intoxicating, masculine, alluring. Carefully, she picked up his sweatshirt from the back of his chair, and she felt even closer to him, imagining him carelessly flinging it here, pulling it from his tall frame as she’d seen him pull dozens of shirts off in the past, on the boat, at the pool, in her bed.

 

_Ben._

 

She lifted the sweatshirt to her nose and buried her face in it, breathing deeply, her eyes sliding closed as she gave herself just a minute to get lost.

 

One more step and she was looking out Ben’s window, his shirt still in her hands, against her chest, tucked under her chin.

She could see the edge of the pool house, the red brick staunch against the bluejay backdrop of lake water and summer sky.

 

“Rey.”

 

She whirled around, caught.

 

_Ben._

 

There really was no way to talk herself out of this. She was standing, stunned in his bedroom, inside his mother’s house, holding his clothes, looking out his window. Even if she’d had an explanation, it would have died on her tongue as he took a step towards her.

 

The hallway was darker, the afternoon sun behind Rey as she stood, framed by the window. He moved slowly as he warily approached her, his Adam’s apple bobbing once as his eyes flitted between Rey’s. Unmoving, silently, she watched him approach, holding his shirt tightly against her chest. She needed it to shield her from embarrassment, from history, from nerves, hoping it would power her heart to slow down.

 

“You’re here.”

 

“I…I…had to drop some things off for Leia.”

 

One more step and he would be within arm’s reach.

In the distance, a cry from poolside broke the quiet inside the house, happy noises jolting Rey into swallowing her fear and making her heart race.

 

It was the same. He was the same.

 

She was looking up into his eyes just the same way.

It was all the same.

His eyes, his throat at her eyeline, his trembling lips as she took a step closer. One more step and she’d reach him. She could put her hands on him, make it the same, feel him again.

One more step and this would all be a memory, it would all be over, it would all be past instead of present and she’d know if he'd let her touch him a little.

 

The house held its breath as Ben reached for her, his hand lifting to the curl of hair against her shoulder. Rubbing it between his fingers as he watched his hand, Rey allowed her eyes to roam  his face as he touched her for the first time in two years. The Grandfather clock in the living room kept time patiently, standing sentry, keeping them safe.

Rey watched his throat as he swallowed, his berry-colored lips plump and parting, still magnets for her gaze.

 

“You’re here.”

 

“I’m here.”

 

“I just came in to get my keys and…”

 

“Ackbar asked me to bring some things to Leia and I knew the house was open. I’m sorry, I don’t know how I got in here.”

 

 _What else is there to say?_ she thought.

_I can’t stay away from you. I’m still in love with you. I’m sorry I misjudged you. I missed you. I’ve never been able to move on from you._

_How can I say all that?_

 

Ben looked down at the sweatshirt held against her chest.

 

“Remember when you used to wear my clothes?” he asked quietly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, mesmerizing Rey where she stood, staring up at him, paralyzed.

 

“I was always swimming in them,” she remembered, her eyes meeting his.

 

“I always wanted you to look like you belonged to me.”

 

“I always did,” she said quietly, her eyes focusing on the hollow of his throat, unable to maintain his gaze, her voice nearly inaudible as she confessed.

 

One more step and they’d be chest to chest.

She could kiss him again. She could be in his arms and feel him kiss her again in one more step.

 

“Rey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I doubted you, I’m sorry I believed it, I’m sorry I took off, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

 

She wondered how long he would have repeated it if she hadn’t taken another step, flush with him as her hands found his chest, sliding to his collarbone. The sweatshirt hung trapped between them as Ben looked down at her, his hands coming around her elbows as she tilted her face to his.  

 

“Shhh,” she whispered, her eyes hungry to devour him, taking turns watching his eyes and his mouth as he spoke.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Shhh. Stop. Ben, it’s okay. It’s over.”

 

“I’m so tired of staying away from you, Rey. It’s so hard, staying away from you.”

 

“Don’t,” she said, courage cementing her words as she spoke them. “Don’t stay away from me anymore. Please.”

 

“I’m sorry, I…”

 

Maybe there was more to say, maybe there was more to explain and forgive and understand and resolve but, there was also this. Rey had waited too long and denied herself too much to retreat now. 

Ben was here and she was here.

Rey was too smart, too sure and too swift to stop.

 

There would be time for more words later.

Another time.

 

Ben’s lips crushed hers and it pulled all the static from her brain, blood from her veins, air from her lungs. It made her spirit jolt to life, it made her soul take to the sky, it made her eyes slip closed and her heart break open and her hands find their way behind his head as she tugged herself towards him.

 

She felt him rip the sweatshirt from the space between them, tossing it aside without looking, and Rey felt her eyes well with unshed tears as her mouth opened and met his while he pulled her into his embrace fully.

 

No one held her like this. No one knew her like this. No one wanted or looked at or waited on her like this.

She’d been patient. She’d been so fucking long-suffering and reticent and wise. She’d been singular and strong and she’d kept her fucking chin up and her head down and she’d powered through studies and relationships and travels and heartache.

 

She’d survived.

 

_Ben._

 

Ben was here and she was here and she had made it.

His embrace around her was solid, a padlocked grip securing her to him even when he leaned away to study her face, both of them panting slightly at the effort of remaining measured.

 

“I can’t do it anymore. I can’t stay away from you anymore. I could never stop needing you.”

 

He was saying her own thoughts back to her before she could verbalize them.

She allowed her fingertips to trace his face slowly as she gazed worshipfully up at him, over his brow as it relaxed underneath her fingers, over his cheeks, his mouth until he turned and caught her fingertips against his lips and kissed them.

 

Beyond the open bedroom door, Rey heard the chalet’s back door open and slam as someone stepped inside, dropping it against the frame. A set of footsteps made their way to the stairs and ascended quietly, as Rey breathed imperceptibly where she stood in Ben’s arms.

 

He leaned down again and she hungrily met his lips, running her mouth against his desperately, silently as she breathed him in. She opened her lips and met his ravenous tongue with her own. Her thighs burned and her panties dampened as she managed to wrap her arms tightly around Ben’s shoulders without a sound, every nerve ending in her body alight with bliss at being in his arms again. His mouth was on hers, their unspoken, urgent kisses communicating all they needed to express right now.

 

“Ben?” Leia called from the hall, descending the steps.

 

Sealed inside his thick arms, Rey's eyes opened as she looked up into Ben’s as he pulled back. He rubbed the end of her nose with his and remained silent, nearly motionless, their eyes drinking one another in before he lowered his mouth to hers again.

Silently, he welcomed her to kiss him back, take her fill, and she gave herself free reign. She took all she wanted.

 

His hands roamed her ribs, fingers splaying as he felt her waist in his hands, and she gasped softly into his open mouth as his thumbs grazed the underside of her breasts inside her underwire bra. Her nipples strained and begged for his touch but, he slid his hands to her lower back, pulling her closer instead.

 

“Ben?” Leia called once more as she stepped outside, the door slamming behind her.

 

“Baby,” Rey whispered once she knew Leia had gone, the golf cart in the distance she hadn’t heard arrive earlier leaving once again, spitting gravel as it turned onto the trail from the chalet. “I have to go.”

 

“Not yet,” he murmured, tightening his grip on her waist.

 

“Yes. I have to. The girls. Have to…camp…” she said quietly between kisses, vaguely aware she had responsibilities, too punch-drunk to list them coherently.

 Two more minutes and she tried again, against her will.

“To be continued,” Ben sighed, his arms loosening slightly, Rey’s eyes opening finally as she got her bearings.

 

“Okay,” she agreed. “Wait. Promise me?” she asked, suddenly nervous.

 

She’d dreamed this so many times the last two years.

She'd imagined it while she kissed other boys, concentrating on picturing her partner as Ben while also not moaning his name aloud. She’d stared off into space as she drove a car, his face hovering above the blacktop as she listened to love songs on the radio. She’d cried angry tears as she’d run miles in early morning London mists, her headphones crooning tunes of doomed love as she’d pounded the sidewalk.

 

“Are you kidding me?” her asked, delighting her in a way only he could, surprising her in his emphatic, unpredictable response. “This is not over. _We_ are not over. We are _never_ over.”

 

 _We are never over_. 

 

She stepped away, her hands still in his as she moved to leave his room before he tugged her back. He picked up the sweatshirt from the bed where he’d thrown it, and gently pushed it against Rey’s chest where her hand caught it, holding it steady against her pounding heart.

 

“Mine,” he said, looking into her eyes.

 

“Mine,” she repeated.

 

One more step and she could meet his lips once more, determined never to take again for granted the chance, before turning and leaving his room. She'd missed the opportunity for too long to second-guess it now. She pressed her lips to his as she lifted herself on tiptoes.

Once she released his t-shirt where she'd gripped it inside her fists, she smiled as she backed away, nibbling a swollen lip.   
His eyes were on her until she was out of sight, and her heart balled up high and tight in her throat.

Her feet creaked on the old chestnut wood floors as she made her way to the chalet door, the clock chiming as she passed.

 

Free time was over.

 

She pulled the sweatshirt into a knot around her waist and skipped up to the trees, her arms swinging freely as she bounced.

The sun would set soon and so many things awaited.


	15. June 2015 Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hello, muffins!  
> I missed y'all and I missed Camp Sweetwood!  
> Had to go back and review since it has been a _minute_.
> 
> Back to updating regularly until we're through.  
> Love y'all! 
> 
> Berry

 

 

  
_Ben_

 

“The fuck are _you_ so happy about?” Poe asked as Ben stole his basketball on rebound and shot a three-point basket with a clean jump shot.

 

Ben waggled his eyebrows suggestively twice, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face as he dribbled around Poe and took another shot, providing an impressive lay-up as he jogged to the basket.

He hung from the rim an extra beat, swinging triumphantly as he celebrated his two points before falling to the ground and shaking his hair from his eyes.

 

“The fuck, man?” Poe asked again, standing with hands on hips as he watched Ben speed around the court, faking out invisible opponents and pausing to set up another three-pointer.

“Why you so happy, huh? What’d I miss?”

“Nothin’,” Ben grinned as he took the shot, correcting the ball when it bounced off the rim before fist-pumping when it scored.

“Yeah, right. ‘Nothin’. I haven’t seen you like this since…wait. Wait a minute. Did you…did you and Rey…” he looked at Ben with anticipation.

“No! No. Nothing like that,” Ben said, shoving him gently before tossing him the ball. He planted his hands on his knees as he crouched slightly, motioning with a flick of his chin for Poe to take a shot. “We just talked.”

“Just talked,” Poe affirmed with a knowing smirk as he lunged around Ben, heading for the basket. He landed a shot only to scuffle with Ben on rebound and watch the ball get snatched again. “Sure.” 

 

“I’m serious,” Ben said, dribbling beside his legs and then between, showing off skills he hadn’t used in a while.

The extra burst of energy he gained from having Rey’s lips against his own again was like the shock of a live wire, a cup of caffeine in the morning. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so alive, so motivated.

Unstoppable.

 

He shot another basket and cheered as he ran to recover the ball where it bounced beneath the basket.

“Naw, man, I’m serious.” Ben said, trapping the ball against his hip as they caught their breath and stood talking. “Me and Rey have a lot of catching up to do. Lots of things that need to be said. You know? I’m in no hurry to fuck this up again with her. She’s too important. She’s too fucking good for me, man.”

Poe smirked, observing Ben as they walked.

“Same ol’ Benny. Still pussy-whipped.” Poe teased, shoving him away as they walked towards their campers’ cabins.

Ben shrugged as he palmed the ball.

“Call it what you want.”  

“You think you two are finally gonna work it out this time?”

“After last summer, all I can say is I know how much ground I have to make up, and I don’t want to waste any more time getting started. You really set me straight, brother. I’ll always be grateful to you.”

“Save it for the Best Man toast you make for me at your wedding,” Poe shrugged, snagging the ball and racing downhill.

Ben smiled after Poe as he jogged the rest of the way to the mess hall, meeting up with his campers where they played hacky sack while they awaited dinner. It was always easier to relate to his guys when they were doing something active so, he jumped in and knocked a few heads before heading inside for dinner with his campers.

It really was an ideal way to spend a summer, beating up on the little shits.

Piling salisbury steak on his plate, he followed his campers to their table, and listened to their arguments and antics. Dominic was a jokester, Carson a comic book nerd and Jackson a sports fanatic. He could see himself and his buddies in their middle school friendships, and he found it endlessly amusing.

It made him miss Hux.

 

When Finn sat down, catching Dominic’s flying dinner roll after he launched it at Matty, Ben stood and corrected them commandingly, and the table hushed.

“Hey, Ben? Uh, can we do the Nerf battle tonight?” Jose asked.

“Yeah sure, why not,” Ben sighed. He looked at Finn beside him who nodded in agreement.

 

A shriek from across the hall caught his attention and his eyes flickered to find the source but, instead landed on Rey seated three table away. Her eyes sparkled like jewels at him, the tiniest hint of a smile peeking out at him from behind her plastic cup rim. He held her gaze and felt his back straighten.

 

_Is she thinking of that kiss this afternoon, too?_

_Does she have any idea how riled up she got me?_

_How I’ll never be able to walk inside that room again, never stand by my bedroom window without remembering how it felt to have her in my arms after so long?_

_I wonder if she also had to go finish herself off after that? Did she whine and moan, imagining my mouth on her pussy, like I imagined her lips wrapped around my cock?_

 

He stared into her eyes, unable to look away across the vacant space, campers strolling by, obscuring his view every so often.

Her eyes twinkled as she bit her bottom lip, holding his gaze, and Ben felt his blood heat.

 

She was too far away.

Three tables between them, but she was still too far.

 

He couldn’t believe he’d ever let her get away. He’d run from her,  believing something cruel, wondering how he could’ve ever imagined her capable of such hurt.

 

He’d been so shocked two years ago, nearly catatonic that night he saw Cassian in Rey’s bed. Few memories strung together from that moment until the one when he found himself the next day staring up at the painfully bright sky.

He was as far from her as he could have gotten when even three tables’ worth of space would have been too much.

 

The boat beneath him had creaked as the Gulf water merged with the Caribbean waves.

The rocking sailboat slapped him awake as he’d gazed up at the white sails, the breeze shaking them stiff as it blew.

 

He’d wanted the blazing sun to sear his eyeballs, burn the image of Cassian on top of Rey’s body right out of his brain.

He’d have peeled his eyelids back if he’d been able.

It was a mercy he could still see, considering how many days he’d spent laying flat on his back, burning to a crisp on that godforsaken boat, staring at the sun.

Snoke had supplied the acid, and Ben dropped it eagerly, anxious to push the image of Cassian and his sweet girl _together_ like that as far from his mind as he could.

 

The sizzling heat hadn’t done it, his father’s dark, musty Craftsmen bungalow in Detroit hadn’t done it, not even Hux and Phasma dragging him through the next semester had accomplished much.

His grades sagged, his scholarship waffled, his hair grew out.

 

Phasma’s dwindling sympathy turned to disgust when she’d walked in on the blonde la crosse goalie straddling him in the frat house basement, pulling her top off while Ben watched unenthusiastically.

He was so tired of it all by then.

He was sick of himself and being numb, high or sad all the time, lying in bed at night thinking about Rey’s skin under his hands and watching it crumble as Cassian showed up very time, wrecking it all.

Phasma had nearly come unglued, only reduced to pity for Ben once they were seated in the diner together, and she’d finished seething while she drove.

“Suck it up, Solo, you fucking douchebag,” she’d scolded as she ordered coffee and insisted he sober up.

“I miss Rey,” he’d wailed too loudly, sniffling. “I fucked it up, Phas. I had everything I wanted, she was right there - _right there_ \- and I fucking fucked it all up with her.”

“Oh for God’s sake…I know. Alright? I was there, wasn’t I? I know you fucked up, you jackass, but hooking up with that blonde Pop-Tart isn’t gonna make you or Rey feel any better.”

“Rey has Cassian,” he’s whined pitifully, dragging his hand across his face. “I lost her, Phas. You don’t understand, I _lost_ her.”

 

“God, you are _such_ an idiot,” Phasma muttered to the ceiling, drawing a huge breath. “For the last time, Ben, just _call_ her. Fucking _call_ her and figure your bullshit out or I swear, I am going to stop trying to convince you she’s the one who got away and start applauding her for doing so if you don’t snap the _fuck_ out of it already.”

Ben dried his tears and sipped the coffee their waitress delivered as Phasma leaned across the sticky table, her roped blonde braid falling over her shoulder, eyes bright as the Key West water.

 

“You didn’t _lose_ her, Solo. You _bolted_. And she didn’t know why. I’m telling you, Ben. She didn’t have a clue. She deserves to understand. So do you.”

Ben swallowed thickly as he listened.

 

“I saw you two together. No matter what you think you saw in that cabin, I was there, too, last summer. I stuck around, in fact, after you bailed and flew to fucking Snoke’s house, creepy old bastard. I saw how you were with her. And if I ever saw you that way with a another chick, I’d back off. ‘He’s fine,” I’d say to myself. ‘He’s over it. It’s over,’ I’d tell myself, but Solo, you listen to me, it _ain’t_ over. And you know it.”

Ben took a deep breath as his heart quickened, his deepest beliefs affirmed by Phasma.

“So, for fuck’s sake, stop acting like my dick’s bigger than yours and pull yourself together.”

Ben smirked slightly as she stopped to take a breather.

“I think maybe it _is_ bigger.”

“Duh,” she’d said as she rolled her blue eyes at him, swallowing her tea. “Drink your coffee.”

 

It felt like a lifetime ago Phasma had delivered the verbal smackdown, inspiring him to get a grip.

Even last summer at camp he’d stayed away, still beating himself up for hurting Rey.

He’d been misled by his own jealousy and insecurity to have stood up and fought for her, and he knew it. He’d found himself staring into the water again a year later as the Michigan sun beat down, feet dangling over the edge of the dock while Poe’s words seeped in.

It was Jyn.

She’d been in Rey’s bed with Cassian. It was all a mistake. Rey had been utterly devastated he’d left abruptly.

Poe had gutted him, cut him to the quick relaying how Rey had cried over him. How she’d erupted by August and shoved Jyn off the dock outside the mess hall and screamed how she’d seen her kiss Ben. How she’d worn dark sunglasses above a grim face while she sat perched atop the lifeguard stand all summer.

Ben had never known more self-loathing.

There he’d been, with the girl of his dreams climbing into his lap and letting him have all her heart and body, and he hadn’t trusted her enough to stay and question her.

 

She’d _belonged_ to him and he couldn’t get out of his own way long enough to believe it was possible.

He’d jumped to conclusions, wrapped in hurt, trying to medicate himself into a vegetative state.

Two summers before he’d fled and even last summer he’d struggled, awash in regret.

Only now could he hold her steady gaze and lose himself in how grateful he was to have another chance.

 

This was the first time he could remember in two years he was able to look at her uninterrupted, shamelessly across a room. She tilted her chin slightly when Rose called her name but, never left his eyes. Rose could see where she was staring. They all could.

She let them look.

“See you boys at seven. Out in the meadow. Suit up and come armed with Nerf,” Ben said, drawing his tray to himself as he stood. Tearing his eyes away, he left his seat to dispose of dinner remnants and made his way to Rey’s table. Seated, she quietly watched his approach.

All her campers, plus Rose and Paige simmered while he neared and seven pairs of eyes tracked him.

Leaning down, he planted a hand on the table top and leaned to kiss Rey on the forehead before standing straight and smiling. He couldn’t remember a time she looked more radiant.

She positively glowed as she lifted her chin and blinked.

 

 _God, I missed you,_ he thought.

 

 _“Ooooooooooooh,”_ the entire mess hall sang, making Rey blush deep red.

 

“Alright, alright, take it easy,” Ben reprimanded.

He winked at Rey quickly and marched out the swinging double doors happier than a billionaire and strutted away.

 

When he caught Rey’s eyes over the campfire flames after lights’ out, his heart skipped a beat as she lifted her shoulders and smiled for him.

All that basketball over the years taught him about taking shots, and he schooled his face into a placid expression while ignoring his raging heart as he stepped around their friends.

 

“This seat taken?” he asked Rey as he leaned in, gesturing to the ground.

 

She glanced his way before focusing on the fire, lit golden by the embers as she answered.

 

“It’s saved.”

 

Ben glanced nervously as he doubted himself, wondering where to head before she interjected playfully.

 

“For you.”

 

Rey kept her eyes forward as Ben exhaled with relief, sitting and crossing his long legs at the ankles while stretching out. Propped by his hands, he leaned back and gazed at the stars as he heard the fire pop, and friends’ conversations murmur.

Somewhere up there was a lucky star and he thanked it, whether he’d ever wished before in his life. It was shining down on him tonight either way, considering he was curled beside Rey at camp in front of a fire, a privilege he never expected to be granted again.

When he lowered his face after surveying the dark sky, Rey’s eyes caught his where she peeked over her shoulder. Ben brought his knees under his elbows and leaned in, angled generously towards her.

 

Everyone around them chattered, occasional bursts of laughter filtering through the crowd around the campfire.

“My girls gave me so much shit after you left dinner.”

 

He couldn’t help the smile, identifying her tone.

 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They think you _‘like me_ -like me.'”

“They do, do they?”

“Uh huh.”

 

Ben moved closer to support her shoulder with his. The fire warmed his cheeks, his fingers beginning to feel burned where they were wrapped around opposite wrists beyond his knees.

Rey rested against him and his heart soared.

 

“I never stopped, you know,” he confessed, studying Rey as she watched the flames. “I never stopped thinking about you, Rey. Even when I thought you were with Cassian I never…”

“I wasn’t! I didn’t!” she whispered ferociously, as her head flwe up to she look him in the eye.

“I know,” he said, kissing her forehead again, feeling her relax against him. “I know. I was so wrong. I’m so sorry. I had the wrong fucking idea, and I’m _so_ sorry, Rey.”

 

She turned her head and nuzzled against his chest, turning from the fire as Ben watched the blaze jump and crackle.

“I was so fucking destroyed thinking you had. I just took off. I know you’d never do that. I should have talked to you. That was a shitty thing I did, leaving like that. I should have stuck around and fought for you. We could have been together all this time and it’s all my fault.”

 

Rey shook her head against his chest and lifted her eyes to his, the checkered blanket draped around her tank top slipping.

 

“I did the same thing though, Ben. Well, not the _exact_ same thing, I didn’t leave,” she said, glancing down at her hands. “But, I saw her kiss you. By the pool. And I ran off. If I’d had anywhere to go besides my parents’ house, I would have probably taken off, too, to be honest. My heart just...it just…”

She searched the sky for answers and Ben had enough holding back.

 

He drew her close, bringing her against him as tightly as he could manage, wrapping her safely. He buried his nose against her crown, kissing her hair again and again, feeling her tears melt against his neck where she was curved into him.

 

Between small sobs he felt kisses at his throat, his neck, his jaw. His whole body groaned with deprivation and desire.  
  
“I missed you. Fuck. _God_ , I missed you so much,” he mumbled.

 

Rey’s touch offered absolution for all the lost time, every kiss healing the last two years he’d spent hoping to lose, punish or prove himself.

He laced their hands and leaned into her.

Her mouth moved higher until she kissed his jawline as he shuddered and flexed beneath her lips, struggling to remain calm. The group gathered faded away as her kisses found the corner of his mouth. Facing her fully, he took her lips with his own squarely as his hand cradled her head.

 

_Goddamn, I’m still so in love with this girl._

 

He resisted the immediate temptation to crawl on top of her, but little else flooded his mind. His tongue begged entrance to her mouth as he tried to stifle a groan with little success. Her hands travelled up to his shoulders and she gripped his shirt in her fists as her blanket fell away.

Ben felt his self-control leaking like a punctured inner tube.

 

“Alrighty,” Finn announced, offering a hand to Rose as he stood. “Well, I’m heading to bed.”

 

“Me too.”

 

“Yeah, me as well.”

 

“Wait for me!”

 

“See you later, Reyther!” Paige called as she trotted away, a chorus of chuckles carried on the breeze where Ben sat still looking at Rey.

 

“Wow,” she said a moment later, looking around the empty campfire. “We sure know how to clear a room.”

 

“I think we made them a bit uncomfortable,” Ben smirked, running his hands into Rey’s hair and bending to suck her neck.

 

Pleasure rolled over in his gut as he heard her moan softly, her head lolling backwards as he kissed her throat, licking and kissing his way to her lips.

 

“I missed you,” she said, as he hovered above her lips, meeting her gaze. “I missed you so much, Ben.”

 

“Show me, baby.”

 

He braced as she climbed atop and pulled his shoulders under her forearms as she hooked a leg on either side of his hips. The world turned a shade darker as she blocked all light while they kissed.  
  
He floated in the darkness but, she anchored him to the ground.

 

His hands slid beneath her flimsy tank top, and he swallowed her groans as he cooled her flushed skin. His cock strained against the zipper of his jeans and Rey lifted her hips against him slowly, repeating till her lips parted against his and she gasped softly.

 

“You feel so good. Missed holding you so much. Take anything you want,” he encouraged as she licked his lips and rubbed her pussy against him through their clothes.

 

She drew his hand to her breast and rolled her head as his palms grazed her nipples beneath her clothes.

 

“I never got off with anybody else,” she whispered as she bounced harder, while he caressed her breasts through her shirt. “I never rode anybody else’s cock but yours,” she told him. “Never wanted anybody else like I want you.”

 

Relief choked him and he pulled back to study her eyes.

 

“Really,” she affirmed.

 

His hands found her hips and kissed her harder as he jerked her down, straining to thrust against her hot center while she writhed and moaned.

 

“This face,” he said, worship heavy in his voice as he swept her hair from her shoulders. He watched her in the light shining from behind her as she rocked against his hard length. “I can’t believe I get to see this face again.”

 

He stared up at her as she tugged his hands to her throat, trailing hers atop as she slid them across her collarbones, dragging them down her breasts, landing at her waist. She leaned forward and kissed him til he was out of breath, grinding his hips to meet hers.

 

“You’re the only girl I want, Rey. The only girl I’ve ever wanted. The only girl for me. Ever.”

 

“That’s fuckin’ right,” she growled, nipping at his bottom lip as he grinned, recognizing words he'd spoken.

 

“Show me you remember how to come for me, baby. Show me you’re still mine. Let me watch.”

 

Time and firelight evaporated as the birds hushed and Ben kissed his girl deeply. He ran his hands against her skin, swallowing her moans and she moved against him, her hands grasping as she chased her high.

He caught her as she threw her head back, sighing his name as she climaxed. He licked at her neck and sucked her nipples through her shirt while her back was arched, heaving and running her hands through his hair.

 

 _Too good to be true,_ he thought.

_Is this real?_

 

He couldn’t have drawn a diagram of their twisted road back to one another but, Rey had just orgasmed in his arms and he could have levitated with proud joy.

When he carried her on his back to her cabin, he cherished the sound of her bubbling laughter, held tightly between her thighs. He could not believe this was his life.

He’d taken it for granted once, and he was determined never to make that mistake again.

 

 _One step at a time,_ he grinned, determination and relief overhelming him as Rey kissed the back of his neck and traced patterns over his pecs as he headed down the hill.

He laughed as she curled around to kiss his cheek and enjoying the way she held him in her arms.

Rey. He had his Rey.

She wasn't lost and neither was he.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance if this feels disjointed?  
> Xoxo


	16. July 2015 Rey

 

 

July 2015

 

_Rey_

 

Rey leaned against the door as it closed with a click behind her, bringing her hands under her chin as she sighed dreamily.

Her eyes traced the popcorn ceiling tiles absently as she gazed up, a smile frozen in place as she breathlessly blinked.

 

She sighed aloud wistfully a _second_ time and Paige cleared her throat.

 

“Uh, hello there, Juliet. How’s Romeo?”

 

Rey grinned, lowering her chin to meet her eyes, amused by the way Paige’s taunting right eyebrow was hiked up as she assessed her roommate.

She crossed the room and crowded onto Paige’s single bed beside her, pulling the oversized sweatshirt sleeves above her elbows, kicking her flip-flops off. She smiled happily and sighed a third time as she snuggled Paige who accommodated, scooting closer to the wall.

 

The sweatshirt still smelled like him.

It smelled like campfire and his cologne mixed with cinnamon gum and _Ben._

 

She closed her eyes and remembered their late night rendezvous, all dark skies and whispered words as he traced her bare curves under her clothes with his strong hands, leaving gooseflesh and desire in his wake.

Rey could barely kiss him without panting greedily.

 

 _“Lord,”_ Paige murmured. “And I thought you had it bad the first time.”

 

Rey hummed and played with the frayed edge of the worn quilt covering Paige’s bed.

 

“I did. I do. God, Paige, I…I just never thought I’d get this chance again. And now that it’s here, I feel like it’s either too good to be true or so good I can’t believe it.”

 

“Believe it,” Paige said as she twisted away, tugging blankets out from underneath Rey. “I’ve seen him. Boy still thinks you’re made of starlight and lollipops.”

 

“Ya think?” Rey asked as she sat up, pulling her legs into a pretzel.

 

Paige appraised her with disbelief and blinked three times quickly in succession.

 

“Are you fucking kidding me right now? Have you seen the way he looks at you? Scratch that, how he _moons_ over you? Like, tracks you with his eyes, smiles at you across a room, can’t keep his hands off you, _moons_ over you? Like that?”

 

Rey smiled shyly and tugged the collar of the sweatshirt up over her mouth, her eyes shining at Paige as she peeked over the top.

 

She bravely darted her grin above the edge, eyes twinkling. “Yeah?”

 

Paige rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Rey. Yes. He’s a goner. It’s all over. Done deal. He’s head over heels back in love with you.”

 

Rey lowered the collar again and rubbed her lips together deliciously. “He says he never stopped. He says he loved me all this time.”

 

“He did?”

 

“Mm-hmm,” she nodded.

 

Paige paused and Rey bit her lip, arms around her knees as she rocked, pulling them underneath the sweatshirt and curling herself up inside Ben’s smell. She was definitely wearing this to bed. She’d wake up smelling like his clothes. She smiled to herself just imagining it.

 

“Well, then….well, then what the hell are you asking me to confirm it for?” Paige teased, kicking her gently from beneath her cocoon of blankets.

 

“I don’t know!” Rey laughed as she kicked back, losing her balance. “I just wanna hear you say you see it, I guess! I wanna hear _everyone_ say they can see it!”

 

“I’ll tell you what I see, missy. I see a huge, red hickie on your neck, you tramp!” Paige squealed as she threw a pillow at Rey.

 

“What? Oh my God, where?” Rey cried, jumping up from the bed to inspect her neck in the bathroom mirror. She yanked the collar of the sweatshirt down to find a smattering of large love bites scattered around her neck, fresh from Ben’s lips that night and she smiled in spite of herself.

 

Cringing despite her pride, she crept back into the bedroom where Paige still lay shaking her head, smiling at her from her pillow.

 

“Oopsie?” she grinned guiltily as she raised her shoulders nervously and scrunched her nose.

 

“The girls are gonna have a fit when they see your neck,” Paige smirked.

 

Rey groaned, knowing their eighth grade girl campers would identify the marks immediately the following day, and hound her relentlessly until she confirmed what they were and where they’d come from. It was no secret they all thought Ben was the hottest counselor and Rey the luckiest girl to be the one he winked at. She was used to them cooing and giggling as they fell all over themselves, alternately praising Rey for having such a cute boyfriend and being jealous of his affection for her.

 

This was going to make it even worse, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to mind all that much.

 

“The girls are gonna have to get over it,” she announced proudly, flinging herself onto her own bed in abandon. “I’ll tell them they’re bug bites.”

 

“Yeah,” Paige chuckled heartily. “They’ll definitely believe that.”

 

“A big bug.”

 

Paige snorted.

 

“A very big, very cute bug with huge arms and gorgeous eyes and a mouth to die for.”

 

“Ugh,” Paige groaned. “You _two.”_

 

Rey launched a pillow back at Paige’s side of the room.

 

“That what you’re gonna tell Leia when she sees it? That a big, ol’ mosquito came and sucked the fire out of your neck, and not her hulking, lovesick son and his apparently super-powerful, suction mouth?”

 

Rey gasped before catching the pillow as Paige threw it back at her. After a minute they were both howling with laughter.

 

“I think I need a scarf,” Rey laughed through tears, wiping her eyes as she rolled around laughing.

 

“You need more than a scarf, girlfriend. You need a turtleneck sweater, and a chastity belt.”

 

“I need, like arctic wear.”

 

“You need a nun’s habit or like, a full-body pillowcase that just _zip,_ goes right up over your head.”

 

“A paper bag.”

 

“A suit of armor.”

 

They laughed till they hurt, finally slowing to a giggle.

 

“Seriously, though. Rey. Are you guys doing more than just making out all the time? Like, for real. Are you discussing your issues at all? All the things that went down two years ago? What you’ve both been doing since then?”

 

_Silence._

 

“Or are you just going to keep scaling each other like a climbing wall?” she teased.

 

“I mean,” Rey began. “We haven’t really had a whole lot of time. I mean…” She shrugged and tried again. “I guess we do have some things to sort out. I’m just so ecstatic to be back with him, I just…I guess I don’t really care who he’s been with or what he did while we were apart. You know? It’s not like I’ve been single this entire time or anything. I’ve had boyfriends, I’ve dated, it’s just…I don’t care. None of it matters because, if we hadn’t broken up over that stupid misunderstanding, we’d still be together. It’s almost like…it’s almost like we never even _did_ break up - not officially.”

 

“Clearly, you _did_ break up though, since you had boyfriends and you don’t even know what Ben was up to.”

 

Rey paused, considering.

Even admitting that still hurt somehow, even though she’d lived with the reality for two years.

 

“I’ve been in love with Ben since I was fifteen years old. I think maybe…I think I’ll be in love with Ben till I die.”

 

Paige tilted her head towards Rey and smiled sympathetically.

 

“For the record, I think you will be, too. All I’m saying is, whether or not you feel like you need sordid details, you two _do_ need to talk about why he split two years ago…” Paige began.

 

“I know why he left, Poe told me, he…” Rey interrupted.

 

“Poe told you. Not Ben. You need to talk to _him_ about this, sister.”

 

Rey rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, studying the cracks as she laced her fingers over her belly.

 

Paige was right. She knew that. Something in her resisted, though.

 

She was reluctant to know of Ben’s potential sexual conquests in their separation, hesitant to have concrete details paint a clear picture of her deeper nightmares. She didn't want to hear what he did while they were apart, what kind of girls he had dated, what their names were, what they looked like.

She couldn’t bear to imagine their spindly hands threading in his tossled hair, their eyes closed in bliss as he kissed them, their cries of pleasure as he touched them. She wanted to leave the pain where it was, scarred over.

 

She was unenthusiastic about rehashing their misunderstanding and breakup, worried it would stir up old pain and open wounds. She was loathe to spend time participating in anything that would cut into her time kissing him, or enjoying his presence.

 

Most of all, she couldn’t bear to think of ending this honeymoon phase, and risking rejection.

 

She couldn’t lose him again. She _couldn’t._ Once was hard enough, she had no desire to go through that again.

 

“You have to do this the right way, Rey,” Paige said more quietly. “Especially if you’re this serious, this quickly. Ya know? We’re not kids anymore. This could be it.”

 

_This could be it._

 

The promise hung in the air above them like the sconce lights overhead.

 

“You at least gotta know if he’s been tested before you get a good dicking.”

 

“Paige!”

 

“What?! I’m serious! You gotta know these things!”

 

Rey threw the pillow across the room where it landed on Paige’s face.

 

“Unless you’re already sleeping with Crylo Ren again, that is,” Paige teased as she threw the pillow back at Rey.

 

“Oh my God, you did _not_ just call him that!” Rey cried, dissolving into laughter as she sat up and threw two additional pillows towards Paige.

 

“I don’t care how tall he gets or how buff he looks, I’m calling that boy Crylo Ren till the day _I_ die. How’s _that_ for drama, girlfriend?”

 

********

 

_“Campers!”_

 

Somehow, Rey had been tasked with kicking off Fourth of July festivities including a scavenger hunt/frisbee golf event which was scheduled to have begun five minutes prior. Even with a whistle, she couldn’t seem to get their attention.

The crowd of wiggly campers below the platform she stood atop vibrated with commotion, oblivious to Rey as she strained her vocal cords to shout and her calves to stretch onto her toes.

 

 _“Camp! Sweetwood!”_ she beckoned, completely ignored.

 

“Hey,” she heard Ben behind her, his deep voice slicing through the din with a firm, warm hand at her neck, against her sweat-damp curls. “C’mere.”

 

Taking her hand, he knelt and twisted her behind himself.

 

“Climb up,” he instructed with a wink as he braced a hand on the ground and peered at her over his shoulder.

 

Rey’s heart leapt and she dropped his hand to brace, straddling the back of his neck as she was seated on his wide shoulders.

 

When he stood tall, she kept her hands on her thighs, careful to be appropriate for the kids, and she tucked her feet behind his back to steady herself. There was no need, though. She was safe as the crown jewels, and happy as a lark. Ben would never drop her.

Poised like royalty, she gazed at the restless crowd with renewed patience, and waited while Ben whistled loudly for attention.

He pointed a finger at the last noisemaker in the group below as everyone hushed.

 

“Mathews,” he barked from beneath Rey. “Shut up.”

 

Kids nearby giggled as John Mathews quieted, blushing profusely, and 300 pairs of eyes landed on Ben. A few kids shaded their eyes.

 

“Rey’s trying to get your attention, you bunch of hooligans. Now, all of ya, shut up so she can tell you about this frisbee thing or Leia’s gonna come down here and close up the Snack Shack.”

 

He squeezed Rey’s foot behind his back before crossing his thick arms over his imposing chest, challenging anyone to speak while giving her the floor.

 

His arms pinned her legs to his sides, and she melted against his heat emanating up through her core. It wasn’t fair to be asked to function in this position, spread against him.

The sun beat down, leaving them all shimmering with sweat where they stood at the edge of the meadow’s clearing.

No one knew Rey was overheated for other reasons.

 

“Cabins, you will each split into two teams apiece. There are frisbees in the buckets at each corner of the field and arrows throughout the woods directing you to the next golf hole. Throw the frisbee to the next hole, retrieve your scavenger hunt clue and keep it with your team! After you’ve completed 18 holes, use your clues to find the treasure. This is a race! On your marks…get set…go!”

150 campers took off for the frisbee buckets, and a moment later disappeared into the woods where counselors were scattered.

 

Rey’s body shook as she felt Ben chuckle, and she leaned over to see his face as he grinned, watching the kids run off.

 

“Thanks for the help,” she said, as she balanced her hands on her thighs.

He tugged her further down towards himself with a hand behind her head and kissed her. Her memories flashed to their first kiss in the boys’ cabin.

 

How many years ago had it been, that first kiss?

How could it feel so recent?

Why could she remember it so clearly?

 

They’d been seated on the floor.

He’d laid his head in her lap.

She’d leaned over, and he’d brought his face closer.

 

His lips had touched hers.

Nothing was the same after that moment. Life split into two parts from that moment, before and after Ben.

 

_Was it then she’d given him her heart?_

_Was it even before?_

 

Straightening, she began to unwind herself, pulling her feet from behind his back when he tightened his arms, trapping her legs.

 

“Nu-uh,” he said, marching down the platform steps to the treeline behind them.

 

“Ben, I can walk,” she argued from her perch, helpless. “Put me down.”

 

“Just sit up there and look pretty,” he retorted.

 

Rey rolled her eyes as he strode to the trees, crouching so she could descend once they’d taken shelter in the shade.

“Whew. It’s a hot one,” he said, wiping a brow with the hem of his t-shirt.

 

Rey’s eyes followed the taut lines of muscle where they disappeared inside his pants, a faint dusting of vertical hair teasing her from his belly button into the band of his boxers, visible above his low-slung shorts. His abdomen dipped into a faint V-formation, and she stopped before she had time to consider the bulge she knew lay below that.

 

 _Holy…_ she thought. _That’s new._

 

She swallowed hard and Ben caught her eyes before she could avert them.  

His signature smirk was in place before she could roll her eyes.

 

“Were you staring at my gut?” he taunted, a smile on his lips, his hands finding her waist.

 

“Were you hoping I would when you pulled your shirt up?” she challenged, as he stepped closer.

 

She smiled up at him, knowing where this was heading based on the look on his face. She knew the heat in those eyes better than she knew her way back to her cabin after dark.

 

“Oh, baby. I always want your eyes on me,” he said as he crowded her. “Like I always want your hands on me.”

 

Maybe it was the heat of the late summer afternoon, or Ben’s extra-smooth delivery of the line, but Rey felt her stomach turn, spoiling her mood in a heartbeat. She pecked his lips before humming and turning to start up the hill. The campers would return to the mess hall eventually and she’d need to greet them.

 

Two steps behind her, she heard confusion in his tone before Ben caught up with her.

 

“Hey,” he said gently, a hand on her arm. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing,” Rey said, smiling brightly as she climbed the hill between the tall pines, approaching the shell path. Her hands reached for tree bark as they wove between the trunks and she nervously pulled at a piece. “Gotta beat the kids to the hall.”

 

She stomped between trees, crunching fallen pine needles and cracked acorns.

“Rey. Baby, talk to me. Hey. What just happened?”

 

She stilled as he came to stand in front of her, partially blocking her way.

 

Maybe Paige was right.

She needed to nail some things down with him, hear whatever it was he’d been up to, but this wasn’t the time, and it certainly wasn’t the place.

 

Was he a smooth talker like that with the college girls he’d known?

Had those girls familiarized themselves with that little happy trail leading into his boxers?

Did they know him in a way she didn’t?

 

Maybe she didn’t want to know details after all. Ben made her swoon with words of love speared directly into her heart, but maybe this new, slick version had been polished at school.

 

 _Nope,_ she decided in an instant. _Nevermind. I was wrong. Cannot deal._ _Don’t wanna know._

Panic sprung up through the scar in her heart, and she side-stepped him, calling over her shoulder.

 

“Nothing. Ben, nothing. I just need to get to the mess hall.”

 

He jogged up to her as she continued to pound the ground, shells grinding beneath her Converse as they walked quickly.

 

“Did I…did I do something?”

 

“No. No, I…I don’t know. That’s the whole problem.”

 

His face was screwed up, looking at Rey with confusion as she evaded his gaze and marched on.

 

“Hey. Rey. _Rey!_ Slow down! Hang on a second. Baby, please. What’s going on? What did I do?”

 

Rey kept walking, her heart pounding as she determined not to meet his eyes.

If she looked at him, she was done for.

All her insecurities and heartbreak would come spilling out onto the ground between them like a broken piñata, and she wasn’t prepared.

 

She scampered forward, struggling to think of a way to explain, avoid, or dodge while he continued his pursuit.

 

“Did I offend you by not putting you down when you asked? Because I promise, I’m not trying to manhandle you or objectify you or anything. I was just teasing. Rey, I’m sorry.”

 

He hurried beside her, watching as Rey bit her lip, her eyes filling with tears as she climbed the hill.

 

She stopped abruptly at the top where the shell path met the blacktop, catching her breath.

Finally, she met Ben’s dark eyes as they searched hers. He leaned towards her, his fingers frozen mid-reach, and she felt her resolve crumble.

Sighing, she took both his hands and laced them with hers as she leaned her forehead to his sternum and shook her head slowly against his chest.

 

His chin rested atop her head as their breathing slowed, her tears falling to the black pavement, darkening it one drop at a time.

 

What happened In Between wasn’t supposed to matter to Rey.

 _That was ridiculous,_ Rey realized with stunning clarity.

She designated life before and after Ben. The In Between would need to be dealt with, whether she liked it or not.

 

Pulling one hand free, she used the hem of his shirt to dry her tears. She sniffled and raised her chin, leaning into his hand when he scooped behind her ear.

 

“Rey, whatever it is, I swear, just tell me and we’ll get through it. Just talk to me.”

 

A group of campers jogged past on their way to the next golf hole, frisbee tossing as they ran, eyes glued to Rey and Ben who stood talking at the edge of the walkway.

 

“Keep it moving, keep it moving,” Ben  called while Rey hid her face, turning her cheek against his heart.

 

He pulled her close as she steadied her thoughts concentrating on Ben’s heart rhythm centering her.

 

“There’s things we have to say,” she said as she closed her eyes,  feeling him gather her hair in his hands “Things to sort out, and tell each other, and I’m afraid to do it.”

 

 _He heard me,_ she thought, holding her breath, wondering if he’d leave.

A moment passed, then another.

After a few more, she sighed with relief as his hands kept moving, his heart kept beating, and he stayed with her.

He held her flush against himself, sweeping her hair off her neck slowly. Rey curled her hands into his t-shirt as she brought her arms around him.

 

“I don’t want us to lose this again,” she continued, “but, I know we need to talk.”

 

“Rey. Look at me.”

 

It was impossible to be afraid anymore when he looked down at her like that, the sun setting through the branches behind him. His eyes were toffee-colored as they gazed softly into her own, and his hands cupped her face. She tucked her hands more firmly against him, twisting her fingers into the fabric of his shirt.

 

“There’s no losing this. There’s no losing me. This is it, Rey. You’re _it_ for me.”

 

_This could be it._

 

“I know we need to talk. And, I’m scared, too. I’m scared you’ll hear things that make you disappointed with me or disgusted, and you’ll change your mind. You’ll decide you were better off without my sorry ass. But Rey, you won’t lose me.”

 

“How can you be so sure?”

 

“We are never over,” he said. “That’s how.”

 

“We belong to each other?” she asked quietly, feeling her way along the words carefully.

 

“That’s fuckin’ right.”

 

She smiled back faintly at his smirk this time, nose-to-nose as he brought her close and nearly met his lips before another group of campers arrived nearby, hooting at them shamelessly.

 

 _“Ooooh, Ben,”_ they called.

_“Ooooh, Rey, is that you?”_

 

In the semi-darkness, Ben looped an arm around her shoulders.

 

“Hey, zip it, Foster. Yeah, I know that’s you,” Ben called as the campers trotted off.

 

“C’mon, gorgeous,” he said to Rey, a kiss against her hair as he tugged her close while they walked down the hill. “I’ve got you.”

 

*********

**Author's Note:**

> [strawberrycupcakehuckleberrypie.tumblr.com](https://strawberrycupcakehuckleberrypie.tumblr.com//)


End file.
